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One important question in the field of workplace spirituality concerns the relationship of this construct with employee work attitudes. This study attempts to make a rigorous empirical examination of the relationship between workplace spirituality and five prevalent employee job attitudinal variables. It assesses the validity and reliability of the measures used and discusses the results of the analysis, which indicate that each of the three dimensions of spirituality used has a significant relationship with two or more of the five job attitude variables examined. While acknowledging that spirituality at work is an abstract concept, this study attempts to provide some of the first empirical support that there is a positive association between spirituality at work and employee job outcomes. The paper concludes with a number of implications and research directions for both academics and business managers, including the need to investigate the comprehensive impact of spirituality at work on individuals and organizations.

This paper is an introduction to the special issue on “The leading edge in research on spirituality and organizations”. The paper discusses some of the issues concerning the outer world of worldly activities and the inner world of spirituality and religion in modern Western society, with particular emphasis on how this affects organizations. The aims of the special issue are put forward and the papers within it are briefly discussed.

Recent research into effectuation and effectual logic show that entrepreneurs think and make decisions dramatically different than typical enterprise managers. One of the major issues in applying entrepreneurship and innovation to corporations is likely the misunderstanding and failed application of these core concepts to management practices. Thus, those studying intrapreneurship and innovation would find great value from this paper's discussion of effectuation and effectual logic as it explains its major differences between entrepreneurs and typical enterprise manager views as they pertain to: Goal setting, risk taking, resource selection and gathering, dealing with setbacks, building networks, and management control. To dive deeper into these valuable concepts, effectuation and its core principles were applied to the product development process and systems development process. This includes applying them to: Screening of ideas, business analysis, development, product validation, and the market launches phase of product development. This article should help those applying entrepreneurship practices to their organizations and result in more innovative managers and employees, or as the authors term it "enterprise entrepreneurs."

This paper aims to examine when travelers are more influenced by friends (word-of-mouth [WOM]) with limited knowledge of hotels but an understanding of the traveler, and when by review sites (electronic word-of-mouth [eWOM]) which have immense experience of hotels but cannot know the individual traveler. Sites such as TripAdvisor® offer millions of reviews, and travelers often reduce that to a manageable amount by focusing on reviews by writers who show homophily, i.e. are similar to them in terms of travel interests. These sites represent a form of eWOM recommendation; what is not clear is how much they replace or augment traditional WOM.

Dual-method content analysis of semi-structured interviews with a heterogeneous purposive sample of regular users of TripAdvisor (N = 30), followed by a survey of TripAdvisor users (N = 237).

Friends were considered the most credible information source, although friends showing greater homophily were more valued than others. However, in some circumstances, subjects found eWOM more credible: when they wanted greater certainty in their hotel choice, so complete information was important; when the hotel was for a special occasion or special people; and for feelings of empowerment. Most subjects compared all sources rather than relying on one.

This study reminds hotel managers that while eWOM is accessible and analyzable, it may not fully represent guests’ opinions; hotels’ marketing strategy should balance it with other recommendation networks. As guests compare sources, consistency in all forms of customer engagement is also essential.

This empirical research aims to, to add value in the existing research on knowledge sharing, investigate the antecedents of knowledge-sharing behaviour by embedding trust and workplace spirituality variable on non-academic staff from higher learning institution in Malaysia. The role of trust, perceived risk and workplace spirituality towards knowledge-sharing behaviour has attracted significant attention from researchers and practitioners to facilitate the culture of knowledge sharing in organization settings.

The units of analysis include non-academic staffs who are currently working in different higher learning institutions in Malaysia. Apart from descriptive study, this research applied confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling.

The result revealed that there is a strong relationship between workplace spirituality and knowledge-sharing behaviour. On the other hand, the perceived risk variables partially mediate the association between trust and knowledge-sharing behaviour.

This research is a cross-sectional study. As a result, the limited sample size in this study may have an effect on the power of generalizability. Further research may be necessary to confirm the model across different industry to reveal the nature of the knowledge-sharing behaviour among the staff.

The findings from this research could help the policymakers and the respective authorities of higher learning institutions to create a knowledge-sharing culture that is needed to support knowledge sharing and knowledge management within the higher learning institutions.

This research not only adds value to knowledge-sharing literature but also used the variable like workplace spirituality under the context of Malaysian higher learning institution.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal the contributions made by Charles Clinton Spaulding, a prominent black business leader in the USA in the early 1900s. This paper highlights the management philosophies and practical work of Spaulding, an individual who considerably influenced African-American management thought and practice, and played an important role in Corporate America from the turn of the twentieth century onward.

The research was conducted by reviewing and synthesizing a number of writings including published works by Spaulding himself, as well as articles about Spaulding from sources such as history journals, newspapers and other resources.

Spaulding’s contributions were significant, from his insight regarding the fundamental necessities for the effective management of a business, to his management style and implementation of practices which reflected his recognition of the importance of transformational leadership, employee development, diversity, corporate social responsibility and a strong positive culture for the successful management of an enterprise. Thus, this paper concludes that the title of “Father of African-American Management” is a fitting tribute to this business pioneer who overcame the odds to become the most successful black business executive in the early twentieth century.

The contributions made by minorities, including African-Americans, to management thought and practice have not been adequately covered in the literature. This paper begins to fill a noticeable void by drawing from infrequently acquired sources such as Spaulding’s article “The Administration of Big Business” and highlighting his contributions to the African-American community and the business community at large.

Virtual communities are increasing in popularity and changing the way apparel fashion information is learned and shared by consumers. According to Agins, consumers, as opposed to élite designers, are now dictating fashion trends and pinpointing the ideal places of distribution. The purpose of this exploratory study is to examine the fashion‐related discussion which is taking place on perhaps the best known of these communities, MySpace.com. The three research questions driving this study include: “What are consumers saying about fashion within this particular virtual community?”; “What commonalities exist among the plethora of fashion‐related information available in this context?”; and “What kinds of insights can marketers draw from the categories of fashion‐related information being presented in MySpace.com?”

Content analysis was selected as the method for investigation. Within the forum Fashion and Style, the subgroup FashionLOVERS was selected for investigation because it represented a general discussion of fashion. The first 200 forum topical areas with five or more posts were selected for analysis. A total of 6,623 individual posts were examined and each of the three authors independently reviewed the posts noting the general topical categories of content. Interrater reliability for the coders was computed.

Eight recurring categories of fashion related information were identified in the study. The four most popular discussion categories were personal style, brands and designers, tips and advice, and retailers. The prevalence of these four topics suggests that consumer driven marketing is a growing and influential component of fashion marketing.

This study makes an important contribution to the study of virtual communities. Results provide insight into the complex, multi‐layered, interactive fashion‐related communication that occurs within virtual communities.

Fashion marketers and retailers are encountering an untapped resource with these virtual communities. Findings highlight the power of consumers in virtual communities and suggest a need for fashion marketers and retailers to closely monitor communication within virtual communities.

This research is particularly valuable because it provides insight into the popular virtual community, MySpace.com. Detailed investigation into types of fashion information that are shared with community members is presented and discussed.

This study developed a new interpretation of the attitude contagion theory, with the information adoption model (IAM) as the theoretical basis. A review of electronic word-of-mouth studies was conducted by using informational and individual determinants to develop an integrated empirical model that identified the antecedents and consequences of consumer attitude toward online reviews.

This study recruited 750 members of Facebook beauty fan pages in Taiwan and used the structural equation model to test research hypotheses.

Results revealed that perceived “ electronic word-of mouth (eWOM) credibility of online reviews” and “product involvement” could be used to explain the effects of attitude toward online reviews. Regarding the attitude contagion effect, the effect of “attitude toward online review” on both “attitude toward a product” and “attitude toward a brand” is stronger than that on “eWOM adoption.”

This paper provides valuable insights into the antecedents, consequences and mediating mechanisms that determine consumer attitude toward online reviews.