Search results

This study aims to investigate how configurations of boundary objects (BOs) support innovation teams in developing innovative product concepts. Specifically, it explores the effectiveness of different artefact configurations in facilitating collaboration and bridging knowledge boundaries during the concept development process.

The research is based on data from ten undergraduate innovation teams working with an industry partner in a creative industry. Six categories of BOs are identified, which serve as tools for collaboration. The study applies fsQCA (fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis) to analyse the configurations employed by the teams to bridge knowledge boundaries and support the development of innovative product concepts.

The findings of the study reveal two distinct groups of configurations: product envisioning and product design. The configurations within the “product envisioning” group support the activities of visioning and pivoting, enabling teams to innovate the product concept by altering the product vision. On the other hand, the configurations within the “product design” group facilitate experimenting, modelling and prototyping, allowing teams to design the attributes of the innovative product concept while maintaining the product vision.

This research contributes to the field of innovation by providing insights into the role of BOs and their configurations in supporting innovation teams during concept development. The results suggest that configurations of “product envisioning” support bridging semantic knowledge boundaries, while configurations within “product design” bridge pragmatic knowledge boundaries. This understanding contributes to the broader field of knowledge integration and innovation in design contexts.

Whilst an urgent need for collaboration is increasingly seen in education to better respond to socio-educational challenges, in practice, collaboration between primary school teachers and their partners is hampered by barriers. The aim of this study is to shed light on these barriers from a human resource management (HRM) angle, using the ability, motivation and opportunity (AMO) framework.

Quantitative and qualitative data were collected amongst staff in 16 child centres offering joint pre-school, education and childcare.

The authors' findings suggest that in general, both teachers and childcare workers perceive themselves as skilled and motivated for collaboration. They perceive aspects of opportunity to perform as most important barriers.

Based on this research, school leaders are advised to organise opportunities for collaboration, especially by fostering an inclusive organisational climate and scheduling sufficient time for collaboration.

This paper contributes to the relatively scarce body of research on HRM within the education sector. Furthermore, it illustrates the applicability of the AMO model for gaining insight into how educational management can be utilised to foster increased collaboration between teachers and childcare workers.

Purpose: The banking sector took the initiative to improve it by releasing a new blockchain application. This innovative approach connects customers from various geographic locations and also gives them a sense of banks’ global presence. Competition is one of the most important market factors because consumer tastes, interests and demands constantly change, making it difficult to meet these problems.

Methodology: Blockchain develops a Blue Ocean Approach in this competitive climate by enticing numerous market segments and giving the financial industry a fresh perspective that benefits the potential consumer. This chapter illustrates how the Blue Ocean Approach can be unlocked by a disruptive technology called blockchain, which generates value innovation and renders the competition obsolete.

Findings: This paradigm shifts the emphasis away from the present competition and generates value and demand for the product. The researcher advises that the Blue Ocean Strategy in retail banking, which uses blockchain technology, works very well since it eliminates cut-throat competition and favours costs, operations, and meeting financial targets on time.

Practical Implications: The study focuses on the bank’s real-world application of the Blue Ocean Strategy and the discovery of sustainable marketing strategies that will aid in their pursuit of innovation. It also highlights the elements introduced in the banking industry to support innovation and the development of long-lasting markets.

This research paper aims to elucidate why and how a fair supervisor influences an employee's job satisfaction. While various theoretical approaches have been explored and numerous explanatory mechanisms investigated in prior organizational justice research, it is still unclear which explanatory mechanism is the dominant one to explain fairness effects. To address this gap, the author compares six distinct explanatory mechanisms of fairness effects on job satisfaction.

The author conducted a three-phase survey study with 309 employees from diverse organizations. The author measured all variables twice to control for stability effects and ensure stable findings. The author combined a path analysis with bootstrapping procedures using Mplus 8.3 software.

The influence of supervisor fairness on job satisfaction is primarily transmitted through an employee's negative emotions, a mechanism often examined in previous organizational justice research adopting the moral perspective of fairness.

Supervisors can increase employees' satisfaction with their jobs by treating them fairly and promoting a fair work environment. To increase the benefits of workplace fairness, supervisors can focus on the intervening mechanisms, such as emotions.

First, the author provides a fine-grained understanding of why supervisor fairness increases job satisfaction. Second, the author clarifies how the effects of supervisor fairness are transmitted. Third, the author identifies the most critical mediator to explain how supervisor fairness affects job satisfaction.

Building on social exchange theory (SET), the main aim of this paper is to empirically study the impact of high-commitment work practices (HCWPs) systems on radical innovation. Additionally, the paper examines the mediating roles of employee innovative work behaviour (IWB) and knowledge sharing (KS) in the relationship between HCWPs and radical innovation.

Using a survey questionnaire, data were collected from employees working in pharmaceutical, manufacturing and technological industries in Jordan. A total of 408 employees participated in the study. Structural equation modelling (SEM) using AMOS v28 was employed to test the research hypotheses.

This research found that HCWPs in the form of a bundle of human resource management (HRM) practices are significant for employee IWB and KS. However, similar to previous studies, this paper failed to find a direct significant impact for HCWPs on radical innovation. Rather, the impact was mediated by employee IWB. Additionally, this paper found that HCWPs are significant for KS and that KS is significant for employee IWB.

Distinctively, this paper considered the mediating effect of employee IWB on radical innovation. Extant research treated IWB as a consequence of organisational arrangements such as HRM practices; this paper considered IWB as a foundation and source for other significant organisational outcomes, namely radical innovation. Additionally, the paper considered employees' perspectives in studying the relationship between HRM, KS, IWB and radical innovation.

In the period of organizational change and transformation, the attitude of employees towards change has become a key factor in the success of organizational change. Based on the uncertainty management theory (UMT), the paper considers authentic leadership as an important antecedent of employee resistance to change and explores the mediating role of perceived uncertainty and the moderating role of uncertainty avoidance between authentic leadership and employee resistance to change.

The paper conducted a questionnaire survey study and a scenario experimental study. In study 1, the authors collected two stages of data from 256 employees in Central China, one month apart. In study 2, the authors designed a scenario experiment and invited 130 Chinese adults to participate.

The authors find that authentic leadership can effectively reduce employee resistance to change by reducing employee perceived uncertainty. In addition, for individuals with a higher (vs lower) degree of uncertainty avoidance, the direct impact of authentic leadership on perceived uncertainty and the indirect impact of authentic leadership on resistance to change through perceived uncertainty are both stronger (vs lower).

The presented results reveal the mechanism between authentic leadership and employee resistance to change from cognitive perspective and depict an important step toward understanding how authentic leadership and employee uncertainty avoidance interact and how they interact with employee resistance to change.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the interesting but largely unexamined impact of self-uncertainty on the persuasiveness of self-deprecating advertisement.

In the present research, the experimental design and survey methods are used to collect data. Furthermore, the ANOVA and bootstrap analysis methods are adopted to verify whether a self-deprecating advertisement is more persuasive for consumers experiencing self-uncertainty and explore the mediating role of self-verification.

Study 1 indicates that people experiencing self-uncertainty are more likely to engage in actual self-verification. Study 2 demonstrates that consumers experiencing self-uncertainty are more likely to purchase products in a self-deprecating advertisement (vs. self-enhancing advertisement), and actual self-verification motive underlies this effect. In Study 3, a novel boundary condition for the main effect–product type (hedonic vs. utilitarian) is found, and it further reveals that the impact of self-uncertainty on the persuasiveness of self-deprecating advertisement will attenuate when the advertised product is utilitarian.

This research reveals that self-deprecating advertising is more desirable for consumers who experience self-uncertainty. Based on the conclusions in this paper, the self-deprecating advertising is more attractive and desirable for consumers who are reminded about their personal uncertainties. Thus, marketers could employ self-deprecating (vs. self-enhancing) advertisement to promote products. For example, in order to promote the waterproof function of iPhone 12, Apple China released a self-deprecating advertisement of “Splash proof and water resistant. Don't worry, iPhone.”

First, this research not only sheds new light on the relationship between self-uncertainty and the persuasiveness of self-deprecating advertisement but also verifies the mediating role of self-verification motive in this relationship. Moreover, this research reveals that self-uncertainty is a significant factor in how people react to the self-deprecating advertisement. It is noteworthy that the self-uncertainty effect is more likely to be found when the advertised product is related to hedonic or experiential consumption as opposed to utilitarian consumption.

This study aims to evaluate how a community psychiatry model, referred to as the Mental Health Action Trust (MHAT) in India, provides decentralized care and comprehensive services to people with severe mental illness living in poverty. Using the complex adaptive system (CAS) framework, the authors aim to understand the factors that contribute to the diverse outcomes of the MHAT community mental health programme as observed in four different locations.

Four MHAT clinics were purposively chosen from two districts in Kerala. A comparative case study methodology was used to document each clinic’s MHAT services and activities, as found during field visits and interviews with staff members and volunteers.

The study shows that all four clinics met the basic aim of providing free, quality mental health care to the poorest populations, although not all aspects of the comprehensive model could be equally provided. Alignment with the MHAT vision, appropriate leadership, the relationship with partners and their level of community engagement determined the varied success between clinics.

The current study evaluation stresses that community ownership is crucial. Careful attention must be paid to the characteristics of selected partners, including their leadership styles and ability to garner resources.

Despite increasing attention to employee development, past research has mostly studied performance management systems (PMSs) in relation to task-related behaviors compared to proactive behaviors. Accordingly, this study addresses the relation between PMSs and innovative work behavior (IWB).

Building on signaling theory and human resource management (HRM) system strength research, the authors designed a factorial survey experiment (n = 444) to examine whether PMSs stimulate IWB under different configurations of distinctiveness, consistency and consensus, as well as in the presence of transformational leadership.

Results show that only strong PMSs foster IWB (high distinctiveness, high consistency and high consensus [HHH]). Additional analyses reveal that the individual meta-features of PMS consistency and consensus can also stimulate innovation. Transformational leadership reinforced the relationship between PMS consensus and IWB relationship, but not the relationships of the other meta-features.

The study’s findings suggest that organizations wishing to unlock employees' innovative potential should design PMSs that are visible, comprehensible and relevant. To further reap the innovative gains of employees, organizations could also invest in the coherent and fair application of planning, feedback and evaluation throughout the organization and ensure organizational stakeholders agree on the approach to PMSs.

The study’s findings show that PMS can also inspire proactivity in employees, in the form of IWB and suggest that particular leadership behaviors can complement certain PMS meta-features, and simultaneously also compete with PMS strength, suggesting the whole (i.e. PMS strength) is more than the sum of the parts (i.e. PMS meta-features).

The purpose of this study is to empirically examine how the voluntary formation of a specialised investment committee (IC) and IC characteristics affect financial distress risk (FDR) and whether such impact is influenced by the level of investment inefficiency.

The authors use a large sample of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) non-financial companies during 2006–2016. A principal component analysis is done to aggregate and derive a factor score for IC characteristics (i.e. independence, size and meeting) as a proxy for the effectiveness of IC. This study also uses three measurements of FDR to corroborate the findings and partitions sample firms into overinvesting and underinvesting companies to examine the potential impact of investment inefficiency on the IC–FDR nexus.

Using feasible generalised least square estimation method, the authors document that the likelihood of financial distress occurrence decreases for firms with separate ICs. The authors also find that firms with effective ICs enjoy lower FDR. In other words, the probability of financial distress minimises if the IC is large, meets frequently and has a high number of independent directors. However, the authors find neither any moderation nor any mediation effect of investment inefficiency for the impact of IC and IC attributes on FDR. The additional analysis indicates the expected benefits of an actively performing IC are amplified for firms with risk of both over- and underinvestment. These findings are robust to alternative measures of FDR and investment inefficiency, sub-sample analysis and endogeneity concerns.

This study, to the best of researchers’ knowledge, is the first to provide evidence in GCC firms’ perspective, suggesting that the existence of an effective IC is associated with a lower risk of financial distress, and to some extent, the economic benefits of IC are aggrandised for companies with a high probability of over- and underinvestment problems. These results are unique and contribute to a small but growing body of literature documenting the need for effective ICs and their economic consequences on investment efficiency in the FDR environment. The findings of this study carry valuable practical implications for regulatory bodies, policymakers, investors and other interested parties in the GCC region.