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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 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 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.

This study aims to examine the information acquired and shared by floods victims in Sarawak, Malaysia, and the individuals’ perception of social media information quality and awareness of social media emergency services.

The research data were gathered from 118 victims in two flood-ravaged villages with a researcher-administered questionnaire survey. Meanwhile, the research instrument was adopted from Reuter and Spielhofer (2017).

Resultantly, 93% of the respondents employed social media for information-seeking and sharing during floods. For example, Facebook was the most extensively employed digital platform. The most highly sought and exchanged information involved eyewitness pictures or videos, road or traffic conditions and weather conditions or warnings. Although social media information quality reflected faster obtainability, higher accessibility and enriched content, respondents’ viewpoints of social media information quality regarding accuracy and reliability proved negative. Notably, over half of the respondents were unaware of the two social media emergency services: Twitter Alerts and Facebook Safety Check.

This study denoted one of the rare empirical works that explored social media usage for information-seeking and sharing by the flood victims in Sarawak based on the boundary object perspective.

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 study aims to explore the influence of internal and external factors on the entrepreneurial performance of rural indigenous women entrepreneurs (RIWEs) in Sarawak.

The study uses a qualitative approach in data collection and analysis. Data are collected by means of a semistructured interview from 19 RIWEs at rural areas in Sarawak. Data are then analyzed using thematic analysis in NVivo software.

The study finds that RIWEs’ decision to start their business is mainly motivated by pull factors such as ego to succeed, ability to be self-employed and financially independent and to contribute to household income. The important personality traits of RIWEs to succeed in the entrepreneurial venture include self-belief, perseverance, commitment and risk-taking. Functional competencies and relationship competencies are cited as the most important core competencies to succeed. In terms of external factors, social networks, financial resources and support, business training and workshops and government’s preferential treatment policies are found to be important to RIWE’s entrepreneurial success.

This study is one of the few that explores the determinants of successful RIWEs in an emerging economy.

This study aims to examine entrepreneurial performance differences between indigenous Dayak women entrepreneurs of their high versus low enterprising tendency in Sarawak, Malaysia.

A quantitative approach was used for data collection and analysis. The population of this study was the indigenous women entrepreneurs in Sarawak, Malaysia. Primary data were collected from 129 indigenous women entrepreneurs using convenience sampling. The survey instrument for measuring enterprising tendency and entrepreneurial performance was adopted from the relevant literature. Data were analyzed using independent t-tests in Statistical Packages for Social Science.

This study found that indigenous women entrepreneurs with higher enterprising tendencies performed better than those with lower enterprising tendencies. A significant difference was found between entrepreneurs with a higher enterprising tendency and those with a lower enterprising tendency in three of the five entrepreneurial attributes: need for achievement, creative tendency and calculated risk-taking. Nevertheless, no significant difference was observed in need for autonomy and internal locus of control between the two groups of indigenous women entrepreneurs.

Very few studies are available in the Malaysian context explicitly concerning women entrepreneurs in general and indigenous Dayak women in specific. Therefore, this study provides novel insights into the relationship between enterprising tendency and entrepreneurial performance among indigenous Dayak women entrepreneurs in Malaysia.

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.