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This study examines the mediating effect of self-efficacy between perceived organizational support (POS) and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) organization (OCBO); and POS and OCB individual (OCBI) in a cross-cultural context.

Data were collected from 207 full-time academics from the private universities in Malaysia and Mainland China using a questionnaire survey.

The results indicate that self-efficacy is a salient mediator linking POS with OCBI and OCBO. Additionally, ethnic dissimilarity is found to have a contextual influence on the research model as the results reveal that self-efficacy only mediates the relationship between POS and OCBO but not between POS and OCBI in a heterogeneous society. In contrast, self-efficacy is found to mediate the relationships between POS and OCBO and between POS and OCBI in a homogeneous society.

This study contributes to the literature by being one of the first studies that examine the relationship between self-efficacy and two dimensions of OCB in two different cultural contexts.

This study aims to explore the internationalisation paths and strategies adopted by firms from an emerging market and serves as a step towards examining the suitability of prevailing internationalisation theories in the context of emerging market firms.

This study adopted a qualitative methodology and gathered data through in-depth semi-structured interviews with 15 top managers of internationalised firms from the East Malaysian state of Sarawak. Data were analysed thematically.

The results revealed that the internationalisation strategies of firms from Sarawak can be classified under three main categories: motivations and markets, modes and measures. The constraints the firms faced were important determinants of their internationalisation strategies. The internationalisation paths and strategies of the firms were also found to exhibit both similarities to and deviations from the tenets of prevailing internationalisation theories.

The study contributes knowledge to the literature of both internationalisation theories and internationalisation strategies of emerging markets, in particular, it advances Fey et al.’s (2016) Five M Framework.

This research aims to examine the effect of the two dimensions of technology readiness – motivator and inhibitor on behavioural intention to adopt a mobile agricultural finance app called e-AgriFinance app among the farmers in Sarawak, Malaysia.

Data were collected from 337 farmers who cultivated the 4 major crops in Sarawak – oil palm, rubber, cocoa and pepper using a face-to-face questionnaire survey. Collected data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling with R plspm package.

The research found that both motivator and inhibitor dimensions of technology readiness predicted the farmers’ behavioural intention to adopt the e-AgriFinance app, with the former had a relatively stronger positive effect and the latter had a relatively weaker negative effect.

This research was conducted in the context of rural farmers in an emerging economy. As such, modern farmers in developed countries may have different adoption behaviour of mobile agricultural finance app. The data were collected from farmers of the four major crops – oil palm, rubber, cocoa and pepper, and thus it may not be representative of the whole population of farmers in Sarawak.

This research served as one of the few studies that focused on the relationship between technology readiness and mobile app adoption among farmers from the perspective of an emerging economy.

This study examines the predictors of behavioral intention of farmers to adopt a mobile agricultural finance application called e-AgriFinance using the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and perceived cost as an additional predictor.

Using a questionnaire survey, data are collected from 337 farmers in Sarawak, Malaysia. The collected data are analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

The research finds that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions are positively related to behavioral intention to adopt the e-AgriFinance app, with social influence being the strongest predictor. Perceived cost is also found to be positively related to behavioral intention which contradicts the prediction of the model.

This study contributes to the use of UTAUT in predicting the adoption of mobile agricultural finance applications among farmers.

For practice, this study provides implications for the Sarawak government to promote digital and financial inclusivity for all communities. This study also provides insights into important features of the e-AgriFinance app for digital finance providers to develop the apps that will be well accepted by farmers in the future.

This research is one of the few studies that focused on farmers' mobile technology adoption in agribusiness from the perspective of an emerging economy.

Utilizing organizational support theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine the mediation effect of perceived organizational support (POS) on the relationship between ethical leadership and citizenship behavior, and investigate the moderating effect of ethnic dissimilarity in the research model.

Using a self-administered questionnaire, data were collected from 294 academics of private universities in China, Malaysia and Thailand. The collected data were analyzed using partial least squares path modeling technique on R platform.

The study found that ethical leadership is significantly and positively related to POS, which, in turn, related to both distinct dimensions of organizational citizenship behaviors – individual and organization. However, further analysis reveals that ethnic dissimilarity does moderate the hypothesized relationships in the research model, in which POS is found to have a mediation effect in the heterogeneous sample but not in the homogeneous sample in terms of ethnic dissimilarity.

To the best knowledge of the researchers, this study is among the first few research works examining the interrelationships of ethical leadership, POS, and citizenship behavior in terms of individual and organizational. Moreover, this is one of the earliest studies to examine the concepts in two different samples in terms of ethnic dissimilarity.

This paper aims to examine the level of information and communication technology (ICT) outsourcing and its determinants in the Malaysian locally owned manufacturing firms. Drawing on the transaction cost theory and the resource-based theory, four determinants – asset specificity, uncertainty, business skills and technical skills – were hypothesized to influence ICT outsourcing.

Data were collected using a questionnaire survey from 104 manufacturing firms listed on the Directory of Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers. Data were then analyzed using R package partial least squares path modeling.

The study reveals that slightly over two-thirds (68 per cent) of the surveyed manufacturers either fully or partially outsourced their ICT services. Asset specificity and uncertainty are found to be positively related to the level of ICT outsourcing, which contradict the prediction of the transaction cost theory. On the other hand, business skills and technical skills are not significantly related to the level of ICT outsourcing, which also conflict the resource-based arguments.

The small sample size would not be able to make meaningful conclusion for the population; the small R² value indicates that other important determinants of ICT outsourcing were not tested in this study, and the transaction cost theory and the resource-based theory do not adequately predict the level of ICT outsourcing in the Malaysian locally owned manufacturers.

The study serves as one of the first studies that tested the determinants of ICT outsourcing using the transaction cost theory and the resource-based theory in locally owned manufacturing firms of a developing country.

The study aims to examine the current state of competitive intelligence practices in Malaysian public listed companies, the perception of environmental uncertainty and the link between the two concepts.

The data were collected from 123 public listed companies via mail questionnaire survey. Variables and measurement were adopted from prior empirical studies, specifically from Daft, Sormunen and Parks.

Generally, the current state of competitive intelligence practices undertaken in Malaysian companies is moderate. More than half of the surveyed companies had established a formal CI unit in their organisation, in which a majority of them practised competitive intelligence at an early (five to nine years) stage in a moderate scale (two to five employees). Using a paired sample t-test, the study found that the perception of environmental uncertainty is higher in the task environmental sector than in the general environmental sectors. A positive correlation exists between perceived environmental uncertainty and competitive intelligence practices, specifically in terms of intelligence acquisition and strategic use.

This study serves as one of the earliest pieces of empirical evidence in the emerging economies in relation to competitive intelligence practices.

This paper aims to analyse how both Lin’s birthplace identity and his Christian identity contributed to his fruitful public career and to ascertain which identity became the most significant.

Archival research is the main method used in this paper. The most important archives drawn from are the Daniel Tse Collection in the Special Collection and Archives of the Hong Kong Baptist University Library. Oral history has also been used in this paper to uncover more material that has not yet been discussed in existing scholarly works.

This paper argues that although Lin’s birthplace identity and social networks helped him to start his business career in Nam Pak Hong and develop into a leader in the local Chaozhou communities, these factors were insufficient to his becoming a respectable member of the Chinese elite in post-war Hong Kong. He became well known not because of his leading position in local Chaozhou communities or any great achievement he had obtained in business but because of his contribution to the development of Christian education. These achievements earned him a reputation as a “Christian educator”. Thus Lin’s Christian identity became more important than his birthplace identity in contributing to his successful public career.

This paper has value in showing how Christian influences interacted with various cultural factors in early Hong Kong. It also offers insights into Lin’s life and motivations as well as the history of the institutions he contributed to/founded. It not only furthers our understanding of the Chinese Christian business elite in early Hong Kong but also provides us with insights when further studying this group of people in other British colonies in Asia.

This paper presents recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy, providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2020.

The paper provides a brief description of all 440 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested in a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.