Search results

The purpose of this study is to examine the mechanism of benevolent leadership on employee cheating behavior through two paths – employee uncertainty and perceived acceptability of norm violation – and also reveal the possible dark side of benevolent leadership. Meanwhile, the moderating effects of leader behavioral integrity in the cognition dual path process are also discussed.

This study invites 383 employees and their superiors in seven Chinese enterprises as the research objects and conducts a paired survey at three time points, and then Mplus 7.4 software is used to analyze the empirical data.

The results are shown as follows. Benevolent leadership plays a positive role on uncertainty and perceived acceptability of norm violation. Uncertainty and perceived acceptability of norm violation mediate the relationship between benevolent leadership and cheating behavior, respectively. Leader behavioral integrity moderates the positive role of benevolent leadership on uncertainty and perceived acceptability of norm violation. Leader behavioral integrity moderates the indirect effect of benevolent leadership on employees' cheating behavior through uncertainty and perceived acceptability of norm violation.

This study reveals the mechanism behind the negative role of benevolent leadership through the cognition reaction of employees to benevolent leadership and broadens the research scope of benevolent leadership. Meanwhile, it provides some practical inspiration for leaders to effectively use the benevolent leadership style and restrain employees' cheating behavior.

This study aims to examine individuals' tendency to strictly follow their own signal while ignoring predecessors' decisions when making decisions under varying degrees of uncertainty.

Using a controlled laboratory experiment, the authors separate the follow-own-signal behavior from other types of behavior such as Bayes consistent or herd-like (i.e. follow-the-majority) behavior.

As the authors systemically increase the degree of uncertainty in the information environment, participants are increasingly more likely to act only on their own signal. This suggests that financial decisions that are made under highly uncertain market conditions may be more signal revealing, and hence, may lead to better information aggregation than previously thought. The authors also find that as uncertainty increases, participants are more likely to switch in and out of this behavior, suggesting that behavior under highly uncertain conditions may also be more random and complex.

The authors are the first to examine how uncertainty affects the follow-own-signal behavior. The authors also offer potential testable empirical implications, such as an increase in contrarian investing, home bias, and own-company ownership under times of increased uncertainty or in more uncertain markets.

Conflict, between individuals and groups, in organizations is a common phenomenon and can have varied implication for the employee and the organization. This paper aims to determine whether experiencing interpersonal conflict drives employees to engage in prosocial behavior (prohibitive voice) and antisocial behavior (interpersonal deviance). Using Stressor–Emotion Model, Uncertainty Management Theory and Impression Management Motives, this study examines the relationship and explores competence uncertainty as a mediator and perception of politics as a moderator.

This study uses a cross-sectional design where data collected is from 386 employees working in nine different public sector enterprises in India. Structural equation modeling using SPSS AMOS was used to analyze the hypothesized relationships.

The results show that interpersonal conflict leads to both prohibitive voice behavior and interpersonal deviance. However, the mediating role of competence uncertainty is valid only for the effect of conflict on interpersonal deviance. Also, the perception of politics strengthens the positive relationship between interpersonal conflict and competence uncertainty.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first empirical studies to have validated prosocial and antisocial work behavior as outcomes of interpersonal conflict. Again, this is one of the first few studies to examine the mechanism through which interpersonal conflict impacts interpersonal deviance.

Based on the Cognitive Appraisal Theory of Stress, this study aims to reveal the mechanism of peer abusive supervision on bystander proactive behavior through two different paths: bystander assertive impression management motivation and bystander defensive impression management motivation. Besides, the moderating effects of bystander uncertainty tolerance on the two paths are also explored.

In this study, 438 employees and their direct leaders from eight Chinese companies were surveyed in a paired survey at three time points, and the empirical data was analyzed using Mplus 7.4 software.

Peer abusive supervision leads bystanders to develop assertive impression management motivation and, thus, to exhibit more proactive behaviors. At the same time, peer abusive supervision also causes bystanders to develop defensive impression management motivation, which reduces the frequency of performing proactive behaviors. In addition, this study finds that bystander uncertainty tolerance plays a moderating role in influencing bystander assertive impression management motivation and bystander defensive impression management motivation in response to peer abusive supervision.

Starting from the bystander perspective, this study verifies the double-edged sword effect of peer abusive supervision on bystander proactive behavior as well as the mechanism of differentiated effects through cognitive appraisal, which broadens the scope of the research on abusive supervision, and deepens the academic understanding and development of the Cognitive Appraisal Theory of Stress. At the same time, it also provides new ideas for organizations to reduce the negative effects of workplace abusive behavior.

In this paper, the authors examine the short-term and long-term impact of general economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and crypto-specific policy uncertainty on Bitcoin’s (BTC) exchange inflows – a form of crypto investor behaviors that the authors expect to drive the cryptocurrency volatility.

The authors use an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL), coupled with the bounds testing approach by Pesaran et al. (2001), to analyze a weekly dataset of BTC’s exchange inflows and relevant policy uncertainty indices.

The authors observe both short-term and long-term impacts of the crypto-specific policy uncertainty on BTC’s exchange inflows, whereas the general EPU only explains these inflows in a short-term manner. In addition, the authors find exchange inflows of BTC “Granger” cause its price volatility. Furthermore, the authors document a significant and relatively persistent response of BTC volatility to shocks to its exchange inflows.

This study’s findings offer significant contributions to research in policy uncertainty and investor behaviors.

Economic policy uncertainty (EPU) has huge impact and harm on real economy, so the economic logic and other economic effects behind this must be further studied. By constructing the “China Economic Policy Uncertainty Index” to capture the degree of EPU faced by Chinese companies, the authors empirically test whether and how EPU affects the level of executives' perquisite consumption.

This study investigates the relationship between EPU and executive perquisite consumption based on a sample of 3,185 publicly listed firms in China. To examine the relationship between EPU and executives' perquisite consumption, a mixed least squares method was used for regression. To alleviate the problem of missing variables that do not change over time and control the influence of unobservable individual heterogeneity at the firm level, the firm fixed effects model is used for regression.

The study finds that EPU is positively associated with executive perquisite consumption. This positive association is stronger for firms with smaller size, lower management shareholding and higher levels of separation of ownership and control. Effective external governance (i.e., analyst coverage, media coverage, auditor and market competition) can mitigate the relationship between EPU and executive perquisite consumption. Further analysis reveals that EPU increases executive perquisite consumption by holding more cash and decreasing firm risk taking. EPU hurts market value of firms by boosting executive perquisite consumption and tunneling.

In an environment with high EPU, the board of directors should reduce managers' compensation performance sensitivity to ease the agency conflict caused by uncertainty. Firms should improve their governance mechanisms and standard and pay attention to their environmental changes. Policymakers should pay attention to maintaining the continuity and predictability of policies, stabilizing the economic policy expectations of market entities and avoiding frequent changes in policies that can harm economic and firm value. The regulatory authorities should actively guide listed companies to increase active information disclosure during periods of high policy uncertainty.

This study contributes to the research on corporate governance by showing how EPU influences executives' behaviors. The authors advance relative studies by showing that this uncertainty embedded in a firm's external environments influences executive perquisite consumption. This study also contributes to the literature on how internal and external governances influence corporate behavior during uncertainty. These findings extend this line of research by suggesting that effective external governance is an attribute that can alleviate the effect of uncertainty on managers' opportunistic behaviors.

Advertisements often use fear appeals to encourage prevention focused behaviors. This approach has been somewhat successful in changing attitudes and behaviors, often encouraging consumers to secede from behaviors such as smoking or to adopt preventative behaviors such as engaging in health screenings. However, health-care marketers have been less successful in efforts to reduce obesity. The obesity crisis has led to an abundance of marketing communications designed to influence weight loss. Many of these focus on fear of physical health risks associated with being overweight which have a certain degree of uncertainty surrounding them. This study aims to examine financial threats that have lower perceptions of uncertainty, and the differential impact this type of threat has on elements of the Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM).

A 2 × 2 experimental design is used to examine the differential impact of messages communicating threat of financial and physical risk on evoked fear, perceived uncertainty, perceived susceptibility, efficacy and intention to lose weight.

Overall results indicate that response to weight loss advertising varies given the type of threat presented. Results indicate that there is a greater level of uncertainty associated with physical health threats than that with financial threats. Moreover, even though individuals were more fearful of and felt more susceptible to physical threats, when they believed that the recommended behavior was feasible, financial threat was more influential.

To encourage weight loss and intentions to lose weight advertising in practice and advertising research primarily focus on the physical health risks associated with being overweight as a motivating factor. Current research explores the impact of financial threats on attitudes and behavioral intention and finds that financial threats are perceived as more certain than physical threats, and the communication of financial threats is more salient in its effect on weight loss intentions. An opportunity for future research is to further explore the impact of uncertainty in relation to components of EPPM and how threats varying in degrees of uncertainty may impact weight loss intentions.

This study examines how project uncertainties (environmental uncertainty and participant uncertainty) affect guanxi and contractual governance and assesses the mediating role of guanxi governance between project uncertainty and contractual governance.

Data were collected in two stages from Chinese contractors. First, in-depth interviews were conducted with nine construction engineering project practitioners in different contracts as a pilot for questionnaire designing. Second, a cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted with professionals and practitioners of construction enterprises to collect primary data. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test seven hypotheses based on data collected from 198 respondents.

Project environmental uncertainty promotes the use of guanxi governance, while project participant uncertainty hinders it; the relationship between both types of uncertainty and contractual governance is the same as with guanxi governance. Furthermore, guanxi governance promotes contractual governance and partially mediates project environmental uncertainty and contractual governance and a complete mediating role between project participant uncertainty and contractual governance.

As the interviewed samples are mainly from China, the study should be replicated using large representative samples from East Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea, to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the influence of guanxi governance. Further, while the internal consistency reliability and convergent validity of the questionnaire data in this study align with the standards, a larger sample size would improve the reliability and validity of the research results and better represent the overall work situation of contractors, owners and public policymakers.

The results provide insights into project governance research and have implications for construction practitioners in deploying governance-related resources.

This study aims to examine individual behaviours regarding coronavirus disease-2019 vaccine brands.

Firstly, qualitative research identified the reasons for vaccine hesitancy in relation to specific brands using data gathered from 36 semi-structured interviews and processed with Leximancer software. Secondly, a new conceptual model was developed with data from 917 questionnaires and analysed using partial least squares-structural equation modelling. The model integrates health treatment effectiveness, vaccines’ immediate health benefits and individuals’ hope as antecedents of perceived vaccine brand reliability and company reputation and their relationships with choice uncertainty.

The results reveal that vaccine hesitancy can be linked with individual, group and contextual and vaccine brand influences and that brand reliability and company reputation antecedents have variable but statistically significant effects on choice uncertainty.

This research’s contribution lies in its analyses of vaccine acceptance and uncertainty from a vaccine brand perspective. The results can guide brand management policies implemented by public and private organisations.

This study contributes to academic literature by filling in two gaps. The first was that no prior studies have directly addressed vaccine brands’ impact, whereas the second gap was the need for brand management policies that public (e.g. governments and public health agencies) and private organisations (e.g. pharmaceutical laboratories) can apply.

In a context of greater environmental uncertainty, understanding the practices and strategies adopted by the SME owner-manager to deal with it is an important topic.

Based on a questionnaire survey of 583 SME owner-managers, a cluster analysis based on the degree of perceived uncertainty was conducted.

A statistical differences across a continuum with regard to entrepreneurial orientation, information gathering, management and absorption practices, innovation and internationalization was observed. These results show that the behaviors, and strategies deployed by SME owner managers are adapted to the degree of uncertainty these individuals perceive. Moreover, these results are not linked to their individual profiles nor to those of their companies.

The results show how SME owner-managers can increase their capacity to face uncertainty by collecting different types of information from different sources, by traveling abroad, by hiring personal with diverse profiles and by dealing with situations outside their norms. Public authorities in economic development interested to promote entrepreneurial decisions are invited to produce and diffuse valuable information to reduce uncertainty perceived by owner managers to support SMEs.

This research is original in that no study has holistically examined the link between uncertainty and the strategic and organizational practices of SMEs. It also responds to political and managerial concerns to effectively support SMEs under conditions of uncertainty – contexts that are increasingly important these days.