Search results

This study aims to present and test a model of small business owners’ adaptation during the COVID-19 pandemic, through the lenses of the resource-based view of the firm, upper echelon theory (UET) and positive psychology. Specifically, it examined the relationships between personal characteristics and strategic pivot behavior in a sample of small business owners during a peak period of the crisis in Israel.

A sample (N = 202) of small business owners provided information on their business and demographics, and responded to questionnaires assessing their personality (Big Five personality traits), emotional intelligence (EI) and reported the extent to which they implemented strategic changes during the pandemic. These changes were categorized as “positive” (e.g. shifting to new markets, adding partners or investors) or “negative’ (e.g. letting employees go).

The results partially support an association between personality traits and “positive” strategic change behavior, mediated by EI.

The results suggest that business owners' personality traits, and chief among them – EI may play a key role in enabling flexibility when dealing with a long-term crisis or threat. However, market and legislative differences between markets may limit the generalizability to other sectors or countries.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to address small businesses’ COVID-19-related challenges from a personal-resource perspective by applying a theoretical lens integrating the RBV of the firm, UET and positive psychology. The findings provide a better understanding of the ways in which business owners’ personal resources account for business pivot behavior in times of crisis.

Forensic mental health care is a unique field that poses complex demands on professionals. Forensic vigilance is a hypothesized specialty of forensic mental health professionals, allowing them to meet the complex demands of working in forensic settings. Forensic vigilance consists of theoretical and experiential knowledge of mental disorders, theory of offending behavior, the criminal history of patients and environmental observations and clinical judgment. Although this concept has only been recently described and defined, it is still unknown which professional and individual factors are related to forensic vigilance, and if forensic vigilance is related to job stress and burnout symptoms. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relation between forensic vigilance and several professional and individual factors.

The current study investigated whether forensic vigilance is predicted by years of work experience and the Big Five personality traits by means of an online survey among forensic mental health professionals and whether forensic vigilance is associated with work-related stress, burnout and workplace satisfaction.

The 283 forensic mental health professionals who responded to the survey indicated that forensic work experience, but not general experience, positively predicted forensic vigilance. Forensic vigilance was negatively associated with Neuroticism and positively associated with Openness to experience and Conscientiousness. Forensic vigilance did not predict work-related stress, burnout symptoms and workplace satisfaction. Personal accomplishment was positively related to forensic vigilance.

Findings of the present study increase the understanding of the construct of forensic vigilance. The findings presented here highlight the importance of differences between professionals in terms of experience and personality. Training programs should capitalize on experience, while taking personality differences in consideration. Personality differences are relevant in hiring policies and team composition. Finally, to reduce workplace-related stress and burnout symptoms, institutions should consider known factors that influence work-related symptoms (e.g. experienced autonomy) rather than forensic vigilance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study represents the first effort to study forensic vigilance in relation to personality, work experience and experienced workplace-related stress and satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the audit price reactions of local accounting firms to the entry of the Big Four accounting firms into the Indian audit market, providing unique insight into emerging market dynamics.

Using financial data from Indian audit clients for a ten-year period from 1996 to 2005, the authors conduct a multivariate regression analysis based on extant audit fee literature.

This study finds evidence of a price-cutting strategy on behalf of the local incumbent accounting firms in response to the entry of the Big Four firms. It also shows small-sized incumbent firms to cut prices more drastically relative to medium-sized incumbent firms.

This study provides empirical insight into the pricing dynamics of professional services in an emerging market setting. Such insight is increasingly important in our evermore globalized economy where emerging markets are frequently the targets of expansion.

This paper aims to examine and compare the strength of personality and values in predicting brand preferences. It seeks to accomplish three main objectives. First, it will evaluate the strength of personality and values in predicting consumers' brand preferences. Second, it will examine whether values exercise a mediating role between personality and brand preferences. Finally, it will examine the mediating role of prestige sensitivity in influencing brand preferences.

The study opted to use a quantitative approach involving 251 undergraduate students as the study participants. The constructs used in the study are taken from existing scales as well as self‐developed branding scales. Structural equation modeling technique is utilised for data analysis.

The paper provides empirical insights about how personality and values together affect brand preferences. It suggests that values are indeed better predictors of brand preferences and exercise both direct and indirect effects on brand preferences through the mediating role of prestige sensitivity.

Because of the self‐report method used for personality assessment, there may be bias in terms of the nature of respondents' personality as expressed in the questionnaire.

The paper suggests implications for the development of a strong brand personality which can appeal to both consumer personality and values.

This paper poses interesting insights and empirical evidence with regard to the predictive power of personality and values on brand preferences within a fashion context.

To investigate the relationship between biological sex (male or female) and stereotypical sex‐roles (masculinity and femininity) and to determine which might be more appropriate to use when examining small to medium‐size (SME) owner characteristics such as: locus of control (internal, powerful others and chance); need for achievement; risk‐taking propensity; and preference for innovation.

Data for this study came from 673 usable responses (517 males, 156 females) to a survey of the attitudes and expectations of a random sample of SME owner‐operators in Western Australia.

It was found that femininity was significantly higher for women compared with men, but that there was no significant difference for masculinity. Results also indicate that, unlike femininity, masculinity is highly correlated with all of the “traditional” psychological traits. As a result, only one significant difference between men and women (based on their biological sex) was found; men had a higher risk‐taking propensity.

The results presented in this study confirm the belief that biological sex may not be an appropriate discriminator when examining differences in the psychological attributes of SME owners. Results suggest that the use of masculine and feminine traits might prove more useful in future research on this issue. Further, given the masculinity bias inherent in most of the psychological attributes typically found in the SME literature, it is suggested that Norman's Big Five (being more gender‐neutral) might be more appropriate in examining differences in SME owner characteristics.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the understanding of how personality traits and leadership styles impact employee engagement.

A field study involving a total of 100 participants was conducted to investigate the relationship between honesty–humility, authentic leadership and employee engagement. Hypotheses were tested using correlation and regression analyses.

The results show that honesty–humility impacts employee engagement and that authentic leadership functions as a substitute for honesty–humility.

Further studies are necessary to examine how honesty–humility interacts with other leadership styles. Further studies can also expand the understanding of this relationship across different cultures.

Employees bring engagement to work through their individual traits but organizations can help create an environment that fosters engagement through positive leadership behavior such as authentic leadership.

This study extends the understanding of the role of individual differences beyond the established Big Five model, by adding the honesty–humility dimension. In addition, the authors examine the moderating effects of authentic leadership on the relationship between honesty–humility and engagement.

This study focusses on What’s App, a mobile messaging service for smartphones, that was founded in 2009. The purpose of this study is to explore which factors may influence students’ satisfaction and duration of time, spent on What’s App.

In order to answer this question it uses the Uses and Gratifications (U&G) approach (Katz, 1959), as well as the Big Five model (Costa and McCrae, 1992), and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Davis, 1989). The research was conducted in Israel and encompassed 111 information science (IS) students. Researchers used six questionnaires to gather data.

The findings of this study shed light on a new technological platform: What’s App that has rarely been examined to date, and expands the U&G perspectives to new media. Findings confirm that the U&G paradigm, as well as personality characteristics and perceived enjoyment, effect What’s App satisfaction and duration, and highlight the importance of both the U&G approach and individual differences when exploring motivations underlying What’s App use.

This study proposes a theoretical framework by combining the U&G approach, constructs from the “Big Five” model, and one variable from the TAM, to investigate the attitudes of What’s App users, and propose possible factors that may explain why certain individuals use What’s App.

The purpose of this paper is to answer two basic research questions: “Does high emotional intelligence affect teaching effectiveness at universities?” and “What role do personality traits play in moderating that relationship?”

The paper is a quantitative study using self-reporting questionnaires on 410 students and 32 faculty members. The resulting relationships and model fit are confirmed using SEM.

The paper shows the importance of high emotional intelligent teachers in universities to increase teaching effectiveness. The paper also shows that the personality traits of the teacher moderate this positive relationship.

The study uses students' responses. Students might negatively assess their professors for different purposes. This puts in question the reliability of student ratings, especially when taking into consideration students' mood.

The paper makes two major recommendations to universities. The first recommendation is to hire emotionally intelligent teachers. The second recommendation is to conduct emotional intelligence workshops for existing teachers in order to improve their EI skills. Both recommendations will increase teaching effectiveness, therefore, better learning and a higher chance of better students' academic achievement, better teacher-student relationship, higher students' satisfaction and better university environment/teaching reputation.

The research model is tested for the first time in the Lebanese higher educational sector.

The purpose of this study is to create and manage halal brands as valuable business assets based on a proposed halal Brand Personality dimension in the micro-spectrum of halalan (lawful) Tayyiba (good) concept in Malaysia. The chances of using Brand personality attributes as a mechanism to get the primary dimensions of halal branding attributes are high.

Methods of interviews and surveys were conducted based on personality traits to construct key dimensions and attributes of the halal Brand Personality. A structured interview with seven halal certification experts from The Malaysian Department of Islamic Development (Jabatan Kemajuan Islam Malaysia – JAKIM) and factor analysis method were based on non-probability, basic sampling using questionnaire surveys on 135 personnel from the Department of Islamic Affairs, Terengganu (Jabatan Hal Ehwal Agama Islam Terengganu, Malaysia – JHEAT) that were involved directly or indirectly in monitoring halal certification.

The author aims to cultivate a theoretical framework for the halal Brand Personality. The paper introduces five dimensions, namely, Purity, Excitement, Safety, Sophistication and Righteousness.

The extraction of the five factors that contribute to the halal Brand Personality has been considered to be an assurance and screening process for halal products and services. It embodies values that are not just for Muslims but for everyone.

Followee recommendation is a problem rapidly gaining importance in Twitter as well as in other micro-blogging communities. To find interesting users to follow, most recommendation systems leverage different factors such as graph topology or user-generated content, among others. Those systems mostly disregard, however, the effect of psychological characteristics, such as personality, over the followee selection process. As personality is considered one of the primary factors that influence human behaviour, the purpose of this paper is to shed some light on the impact of personality traits on followee selection.

The authors performed a data analysis comparing the similarity among Twitter users and their followees regarding personality traits. The authors analysed three different similarity measures. First, the authors computed an overall similarity considering the five personality traits or dimensions of the Five-Factor model as a whole. Second, the authors computed the dimension-to-dimension similarity considering each individual personality trait independently of each other. Third, the authors computed a cross-dimension similarity considering each personality dimension in relation to the others.

This study showed that personality should be considered as a distinctive factor in the process of followee selection. However, personality dimensions should not be analysed as a whole as the overall personality similarity might not accurately assess the actual matching between individuals. Instead, the performed data analysis showed the existence of relations among the individual dimensions. Thus, the importance of considering each personality trait with respect to others is stated.

This study is among the firsts to study the impact of personality, one of the primary factors that influence human behaviour and social relationships, in the selection of followees in micro-blogging communities.