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There is a research gap in strategic management regarding the complement from managerial cognition literature to the behavioral theory of firm, as well as linkage between cognitive structure and cognitive process of strategy formulation in the field of managerial cognition, which also calls for further exploration. The purpose of this paper is to construct a model from an integrated view for explaining the process of cognitive reconstruction under incremental changes.

Qualitative research is conducted in the form of 17 semi-structured interviews in four hidden champions operating in China. Based on the model generated from the literature review, this paper adopts the abductive logic for data analysis.

This paper draws the following conclusions. The cognitive structure is shaped by the changing environment and the performance feedback, the variance in structural attributes will affect whether the changing environment destructs the effectiveness of original cognitive structure or not, the centrality of cognitive structure will promote the efficiency of tried-and-true organizational adaptations to incremental changes, and cognitive structure reconstruction is the result of the recursive process of trial-and-error learning.

This paper proposes the model explaining the interaction mechanisms between cognitive structure and strategy formulation process. It also presents the iterative sense-making process for reconstructing cognitive structure in strategy formulation. Both of them extend the understanding on managerial cognition in organizational adaptations to incremental environmental changes.

The purpose of this work is to experimentally measure trust and study its relationship to group loan allocation within a community bank.

An artefactual field experiment is run to capture a measure of trust that mimics aspects of trusting behavior in a community bank. The experimental design and empirical setting take into account risk and altruism, two known confounders of trust measures. Regression analysis is used to estimate the relationship between a novel measure of trust and the loan amount a borrower receives from their rural community bank.

The trust measure has a statistically significant, positive relationship with loan size. A one standard deviation increase in the trust measure corresponds to a 13.3 percent increase in the loan amount.

Results of the study suggest that, for community banks, trust in a borrower plays a large role in screening applicants and therefore determining loan size. Several such banks have considered graduating to commercial credit. However, given the outsize role of trust in lending decisions, it is not clear if commercial lending models – which rely less on social capital – will work.

A new trust game is developed that captures relationship-specific measures of directed trust that community bank members have towards each borrower. The trust measure is also context-specific as play in the game is analogous to how community bank members trust some borrowers (more than others) with larger loans. The emphasis on relationship- and context-specific trust measures is key to interpreting results from artefactual field experiments.

The article addresses issues raised in this Journal (Vol. 3, Issue 1) on the relationship between supporting people and neighbourhood renewal. Using findings from an actionresearch project, it argues the case for placing community care within a social inclusion framework which uses a community development approach.

The study aims to investigate the differences among urban and rural consumers in terms of their energy and water sustainable consumption behaviour levels and drivers and also empirically blueprint conceptual frameworks highlighting urban and rural consumer drivers to consume sustainably.

This research follows an exploratory design using a qualitative approach; 14 in-depth interviews followed by one focus group were conducted with urban consumers; on the other hand, 18 in-depth interviews followed by one focus group were conducted with rural consumers.

The findings show that no differences exist among urban and rural consumers in terms of both their sustainable consumption levels and their drivers to consume sustainably; such findings were encapsulated in the form of one conceptual framework pertinent to both urban and rural consumers; it has the following relevant factors: consumers’ attitudes toward conservation, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, self-preference, public media influence, perceived economic value and perceived moral obligation to be relevant antecedents of conservation behaviour, which – in turn – drives sustainable purchase behaviours with the moderating effect of socio-demographic variables.

This paper contributes to extant literature as it provides evidence for the drivers of sustainable consumption behaviours of urban versus rural consumers in emerging countries; it also tentatively answers the question of whether the socio-demographic variables infer a difference in consumers’ sustainable consumption; finally, it studies sustainable consumption from a novel perspective with a focus on the relationship between its two pillars.

The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of research that aimed to determine what university students living in Unite accommodation in the UK understand about the concept of sustainable living. It considers what barriers they perceive to be standing in the way of following sustainable living practices. In particular, the research aimed to explore any value–action gap for the student population with a view to informing future actions to help close any gap.

The study was completed through an online questionnaire survey of students living in halls of residence operated by provider The Unite Group Plc. The survey informed semi-structured interviews and focus groups that explored the issues raised in greater detail.

It was found that students living in Unite properties believed sustainable living to be important, yet levels of understanding were very low and there appeared to be a wide value–action gap. Reasons for this are varied; however, an unexpected theme emerged around the association of effort and importance. There was a very strong association between sustainable living and recycling, which, therefore, saw the lack of adequate recycling facilities as a significant barrier to sustainable living. There were also issues around a lack of information, cost and respondents’ flatmates as further barriers. However, the most significant barrier was the displacement of responsibility for sustainable living to other people or organisations.

Gaining an insight into the complexity of attitude and behaviour of students with the sustainability agenda will enable understanding that can be applied to activities that promote sustainability.

This study aims to examine the effect on audit efficiency of outsourced internal audit function (IAF) providers with industry and/or firm-specific expertise. Drawing on relevant studies from external and internal audit literature, the authors assume that such IAF providers are associated with greater audit efficiency as proxied by audit report lag and audit fees.

Based on a sample of firms listed on the Omani capital market during 2005–2019, the pooled regressions are used to test the developed hypotheses. The authors use the market share approach to identify outsourced IAF industry expertise providers and tenure to measure the firm-specific expertise of outsourced IAF providers.

The authors find that industry outsourced IAF providers are not associated with shorter audit report lag and lower audit fees. The authors also find that firm-specific expertise outsourced IAF providers are associated with a greater reduction in audit report lag and audit fees. These conclusions are robust under a battery of analyses. The significant contribution of firm-specific expertise outsourced IAF providers to audit efficiency is incremental when abnormal audit report lag and audit fees analysis is conducted.

The results are the first to attest to the contribution of outsourced IAF with firm-specific expertise. They also show that industry expertise held by outsourced IAF providers does not contribute to audit efficiency.

Investigates an example of group entreprenuership as found in a project promoting social and economic regeneration in economically fragile communities in north east Scotland. Encouraging entrepreneurship in community groups is the basis of the Villages in Control (ViC) project introduced in north east Scotland in 1993. ViC was a joint initiative between the local authorities of the region and the Local Enterprise Company (LEC) and was aimed at encouraging rural and coastal communities to diversify away from existing economic patterns. The objective of ViC was to encourage entrepreneurial activity at community level through a process which involved a group of individuals from each village developing and implementing a strategic plan for the economic regeneration of their own community. Using one community as an example, the paper discusses the experiences and impact of ViC and illustrates the entrepreneurial ventures generated by the community group. The paper emphasizes the importance of co‐ordinating community members into a recognisable group in order to produce the community strategic document, and also for the ideas for economic regeneration to come from the group itself. The discussion concludes that developing community entrepreneurship requires a supportive infra‐structure and a long term commitment of people and resources to facilitate the process of releasing the entrepreneurial spirit of each individual community.

This paper explores content and media evaluation applications for public relations research, and identifies the difference between advertising measures of value and public relations value. In discussing this concept, it also seeks to offer research which shows that press as well as the broader activities of public relations have a powerful ally in semiotics and reception analysis, one that can aid understanding of work in all aspects of PR practice. It argues that public relations is effective when it works in the cultural context and that measurement, research and evaluation have to feed from robust methodologies to be at their most effective.

This paper aims to investigate the factors affecting local government officials’ susceptibility to corrupt behavior among Indonesian local government officials.

This study uses a self-report survey and collected 449 questionnaires from 65 village government districts in Central Java province, Indonesia. This study uses a simple and partial correlation to measure the relationship between the susceptibility to corrupt behavior and the independent variables. Binary logistic regression was used to investigate which independent variables were best to explain the local government officials’ susceptibility to corrupt behavior.

The results show that the factors that best explain corrupt behavior’s susceptibility are the officials’ moral conviction to refrain from corrupt behavior, the perceived opportunity of corruption and the perceived benefit of engaging in such behavior. Further, this study finds an appealing crossover interaction between the perceived cost and social norms on corrupt behavior, such that when officials perceive the cost of engaging in corrupt behavior as low, they will rely more on social norms to decide whether to commit corrupt behavior.

This study provides actionable information for policy formulation. In particular, this study indicates that improvement of internal control can deter corrupt behavior. In addition, the findings of this study also suggest that changing the way we convey the message about corruption might be a promising intervention to mitigate corrupt behavior among government officials. More specifically, a more persuasive-positive-tone message that emphasizes the benefit of not engaging in corrupt behavior or that most people are against corruption can deter corrupt behavior.

The present study provides empirical evidence on the determinants of local government officials’ corrupt behavior from Indonesia’s perspective, which is currently limited.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how social network capital may facilitate agricultural household market access in Uganda. Specifically, the paper investigates if social network capital has significant positive effects on the ability of households to receive higher prices for coffee.

In this paper, social network capital is modeled using a household utility maximisation problem that is dependent on consumption and social interactions. The authors assume that social network capital mediates economic benefits through its effect on information flow, market intelligence and collective bargaining. The paper uses two-stage least square econometric methods to investigate whether group involvement at the household level helps farmers to access markets with higher prices.

The findings indicate that social network capital, measured in form of density of participation and attendance score, and multiplicative and additive indices of these, have significant positive effects on the ability to receive higher prices for coffee.

The authors realise that several weaknesses in the approach could compromise the validity of the findings. These weaknesses include: the cross-sectional nature of the data, the omitted variable bias, the endogeneity concerns of social capital, sample size and the dimensions that the paper choses to capture social network capital. Future research should explore the factors that can help households to engage more in group activities.

The findings have important implications for government policy especially in areas of agricultural development and poverty reduction. Specifically, governments should pay close attention to various social groups as they can serve as important channels to achieve better market outcomes, as is the for coffee prices in rural Uganda.

Many governments in Sub Saharan Africa are constrained to provide basic public goods to the people. This is due to a combination of limited budgets and lack of good leadership. In such circumstances, the people have to rely on their collective/social effort to take advantage of markets opportunities. Such opportunities can be accessed using the existing social structures whose norms and the trust between members permit cooperation.

The study contributes to a small but growing empirical literature on social groups and how they can mediate social economic outcomes especially for rural households. The empirical estimations take into consideration the endogeinety concerns associated with social network capital. The paper will be useful for policy makers and researchers who may have a keen interest in the roles that group activities play in agricultural development and poverty reduction.