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Adopting a dual processing cognitive perspective, this study explores the decision-making processes past the start-up stage that small entrepreneurial businesses employ to grow. The author examines how entrepreneurs evaluate and make decisions on growth opportunities in their business environment. The author uses cognitive style as a theoretical lens to capture differences in information processing, combining interviews and psychometric questionnaires to analyse cognitive styles. The longitudinal mixed methods approach illustrates the richness of the entrepreneur’s decision-making process, which the author tracks over a two-year period. The author determines how intuitive and analytical cognitive styles are used by entrepreneurs and the contribution these styles make to decision-making. The findings show that the two cognitive styles are versatile as entrepreneurs adjust and adapt their cognitive style over time, in keeping with the situational factors of their business environment. The author also finds marked differences between novice and mature entrepreneurs and that experienced entrepreneurs exhibited greater levels of cognitive versatility, which was directly linked to their prior experience. The study has significant implications for future research, which should consider the question how an entrepreneur’s cognitive style is dependent on the business context and their prior experience.

This study aims to examine the impact of controversial governance practices on media coverage under a specific context. Based on the attribution theory, this study develops a theoretical framework to explore how antecedent factors can influence attribution process under a particular cultural context.

This paper presents a behavioral view of the media and corporate governance to demonstrate how media attributes different reasons for the same controversial governance practice in Chinese-specific context. Using 1,198 non-state-owned listed company observations in China as the study sample, cross-section data are used to build a multiple linear regression mode to test hypotheses.

The analysis indicates that the media imposes fewer penalties on founder-CEO firms than on non-founder-CEO firms for engaging in controversial governance practices, such as CEO compensation. CEO tenure negatively moderates the effect of CEO compensation on negative media coverage in non-founder-CEO firms. The positive media bias evidence for founder-CEO firms exists only when the firm is better performed.

This study’s contribution to the governance literature starts with its logical reasoning of basic assumptions in the agency theory, and that media penalty will arise when managers impose actions that against interests of shareholders or other stakeholders. This study shows that the rule is not always true. The findings also bridge the connection of governance literature and reputation literature to better explain how media can act as a social arbitration role.

This study provides insights into how belief and information of reputational evaluators affect attribution consequences on controversial governance practices. Moreover, this study looks beyond the internal elements and focuses on China’s traditional cultural context as well. Specifically, the authors concentrate on the attribution process by showing the importance of evaluators’ framing tendency with regard to controversial practices. The results extend the knowledge about how conformity makes media coverage shows a bias effect on interactions during the evaluation process.

The purpose of this research is to show that Christmas spirit is often given as a reason or excuse for the goodwill, generosity and altruism associated with the celebration of Christmas. Despite the influence of the occasion on cultural, financial and economic issues, there has been no specific empirical attention toward the structure or measurement of the concept of Christmas spirit. Research into this popular topic is important, timely and has universal appeal.

Defining the structure of Christmas spirit drew upon previous academic research about feelings and evaluations. This research employed a process of exploratory factor analysis, correlations, a confirmatory analysis and path analysis that combined the associated constructs. The required information was gathered via a self‐administered survey method where the respondents fell within a sample frame of a parent with at least one child between the ages of three and eight years. A questionnaire package containing two instruments (each of 70 questions), instructions and a self‐addressed return envelope was delivered to five participating schools and seven kindergartens for children to take home to their parents. As a result, 450 acceptable cases were available for analysis.

Overall, the singular finding confirmed that the multi‐dimensional feelings‐evaluation model, as outlined in this study, is a valid measurement of Christmas spirit.

Future research that incorporates this measure has implications for consumer behaviour theory and the motivation toward Christmas festivities. The findings have consequences for content and themes of advertising, and the scope of brand promotion by owners, promoters and retailers of brands and the associated business activity.

Christmas celebrations are a complex amalgam of motives, strategies, attitudes, rituals, behaviours and relationships. Christmas spirit is an important topic of deep interest to consumer behaviour researchers; being an often‐used, but ambiguous term there is a need for theoretical clarification. Therefore, it is timely to explore and develop behavioural theory related to the celebration because of the festivity's economic and social impacts on society.

Valence is one of the key dimensions underlying actor engagement, yet there is limited research to provide a comprehensive understanding of the concept. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise engagement valence in actor networks and develop an agenda for future research.

The exploration of the psychological foundations of the concept of valence and a systematic literature review from a multiple database search contribute to four sets of propositions defining the domain of the concept of actor engagement valence.

The propositions posit that valence resides in the engaging actor’s past, current and future psychological dispositions, which can shift between positive, negative and ambivalence. Actor engagement valence is triggered by the engagement objects and value propositions of other actors in the network. The antecedents of actor engagement valence comprise individual factors such as cognitive evaluations and hedonic feelings, as well as network-related factors such as social norms and shared beliefs, and the network structure. The net balance of actor engagement valence determines the actor’s engagement behaviours, and this relationship is moderated by individual and network factors.

This is the first study to conceptualise actor engagement valence, which contributes to the refinement of the actor engagement concept. This research defines the conceptual domain, deepens the understanding and provides an agenda for future research into the valence of engagement among actors in networks. The study recognises the institutional influences on actor engagement valence, and contributes to an understanding of the nature of actors’ psychological dispositions and how their valence determines the actors’ behavioural engagement manifestations.

For work organizations and their members, establishing and maintaining mutually satisfying employment relationships is a fundamental concern. The importance that scholars attach to employment relationships is reflected in research streams that explore the optimal design of strategic human resource management systems, the nature of psychological contract fulfillment and violation, and the factors associated with achieving person-environment fit, among others. Generally missing from theory and research pertaining to employment relationships is the perspective of individuals who reside at the employee-employer interface – managerial leaders. We argue that, for managerial leaders, a pervasive concern involves the tangible and intangible resource requirements of specific employees. We then provide the groundwork for study of the leader’s perspective on employment relationships by proposing a model that identifies how employees come to be perceived as low versus high maintenance and how these perceptions, in turn, influence leader cognition, affect, and behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate occurrences of confirmation bias existing for sponsors whose brand is congruent to a sport. More specifically, this research investigates: if confirmation biases for congruent brands occur in the absence of exposure, the impact audience segmentation has on sponsorship evaluations by comparing highly identified fans to non-fans, and if congruent sponsors are recalled more often than incongruent sponsors after exposure.

An experiment was conducted to measure how exposure, type of sponsor, and fan identification impacts recognition, attitude, and purchase intention.

The results confirm sport-congruent brands are more likely to be falsely recognized as a sponsor than non-congruent sponsors in the absence of sponsorship participation. Sport consumers’ confirmation biases yield positive attitudes and purchase intentions for congruent brands even in the absence of immediate exposure. Lastly, exposure has no impact on recall or sponsor outcomes, suggesting the need for articulating the brand’s connection prior to the event to build stronger memory traces.

Congruent brands should carefully consider investment costs and expected return on investment, noting benefits of participation might be marginal as a result of confirmation biases. Potential sponsors should also understand cognitive benefits begin before exposure to the sponsorship occurs, and therefore need to articulate a connection to the event prior to exposure by consumers.

The findings suggest the importance of confirmation biases when attempting to reach sport consumers. Some brands may be able to increase recall and recognition even in the absence of exposure, thus helping decision makers when managing budgets.

The purpose of this paper is, as the health benefits of breastfeeding for mother and child have already been fully ascertained, to highlight the differences on why short- and long-term breastfeeding mothers adopt their respective behaviours. Based on these findings, a model for long-term breastfeeding is put forward here. The aim is to identify the specific variables and processes that create confidence during the early days in breastfeeding mothers so that social marketing campaigns can be deployed more effectively to sustain this behaviour over time.

The validity and reliability of the scales used were tested using Cronbach’s alpha and exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Differences in cognition, attitudes and behaviour with respect to breastfeeding between the short- and long-term breastfeeding mothers were analysed with ANOVA and multi-group structural equation modelling. An independent self-administered questionnaire was given to 311 breastfeeding mothers in 2008. The surveys were carried out at the Maternity Hospital together with five other medical centres on the island of Gran Canaria (5 per cent error and 95 per cent reliability). This can be considered to be a fair representation of trends in breastfeeding in Spain, as most births take place in similar state hospitals.

As expected, short- and long-term breastfeeding mothers differed over the key variables. While attitudes toward, and knowledge of, breastfeeding produce the adoption of breastfeeding, long-term commitment seems to relate more to general knowledge on health and other intangibles.

In light of these results, specific marketing efforts should be designed to achieve the continuation of breastfeeding. Interventions that focus on attitudes toward, and knowledge of, breastfeeding may prove ineffective.

As many worldwide research projects suggest, the extremely large percentage of mothers who discontinue breastfeeding before the infant reaches six months of age represent a greater challenge than the relatively low percentage of mothers who choose not to breastfeed from the beginning. This paper focuses on long-term commitment and outlines a possible model to promote the same.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of China’s image as a country on consumers’ evaluations of brands. Drawing on the literature pertaining to country images and country-of-origin effect, a research model was developed to evaluate country image, corporate image and brand image.

To test the model and investigate the effects of country, corporate and brand image on brand attitude and purchase intention, a survey was conducted that examined Korean consumers’ attitudes toward well-known Chinese brands.

China’s country image was found to comprise four dimensions: political image, economic image, citizen image and country relationship image. Country image had a direct positive effect on brand attitude, and through brand attitude, country image had an indirect positive effect on purchase intention. Corporate image and brand image had a positive effect on brand attitude and a direct positive effect on purchase intention. In addition, country image had a positive effect on corporate image, while through corporate image, country image had an indirect positive effect on brand image.

These findings not only offer theoretical evidence for research on China’s country image, but also provide empirical evidence to support the “going global” strategies of Chinese enterprises.

Researchers have proposed a variety of models to depict, explain, and understand ethical decision-making processes. Rest (1986) proposed a four-stage, individually oriented model, in which a person who makes a moral decision must (1) recognize the moral issue, (2) make a moral judgment, (3) establish moral intent, and (4) make moral decisions. Similarly, Ferrell, Gresham, and Fraedrich (1989) developed a five-stage model that included awareness, cognitions, evaluations, determination, and actions. Finally, Trevino (1986) proposed a slightly different model that begins with the recognition of an ethical dilemma and proceeds to a cognition stage in which individuals make moral judgments that further affect their ethical or unethical decisions (see Jones, 1991, for a review).