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This paper reports the results of a three-year-long research on business relationships, relying on qualitative data gathered through multiple-case study research of four focal companies operating in Australia. The industry settings are as follows: steel construction, vegetable oils trading, aluminum and steel can manufacture, and imaging solutions. The research analyzes two main aspects of relationships: structure and process. This paper deals with structure describing it by the most desired features of intercompany relationships for each focal company. The primary research data have been coded drawing on extant research into business relationships. The main outcome of this part of the research is a five construct model composed by trust, commitment, bonds, distance, and information sharing that accounts for all informants’ utterances about relationship structure.

This study aimed to discover the factors affecting employee performance by testing the relationship of change management, job satisfaction, organizational commitment and leadership style on employee performance in Indonesian sharia property companies.

The study population was all members of “Sharia Property Developer” (DPS) across Indonesia with criteria of having subordinates at least one person and is listed as a DPS member. The samples used were 71 people from the 200 members of DPS across Indonesia. The sampling method used was based on R² value and significance level with an 80% statistical strength. Data analysis was carried out using smartPLS software to test the relationship of change management, job satisfaction, organizational commitment and leadership style on employee performance.

The utilization of SEM in Smart PLS for change management with the ADKAR method had a negative value of 6.2% in affecting employee performance and 4.6% in affecting job satisfaction. Job satisfaction insignificantly affected employee performance by 7.5%. Leadership style and organizational commitment positively affected performance by 57.9% and 25.6%, respectively.

This study did not limit respondents’ education levels. Twenty percent of respondents were middle and high school graduates. Respondent’s position was mostly the highest leader in the company by 58%. Indicators in the ADKAR model did not implement the construct validity test since the researchers did not find precedent studies that discuss the indicators of the ADKAR model in detail.

Factors that positively and significantly affected employee performance can be used to plan employee performance of DPS member companies.

The company must create a program to produce meaning in working, shape leaders to have discipline by putting appropriate employees as leaders.

This study used change management, organizational commitment, job satisfaction and leadership style as exogenous variables, job satisfaction and leadership style as intervening variables. The study model modified the previous study regarding employee performance improvement because it utilized the change management with the ADKAR model. The study objects were sharia property companies, where the researchers did not find previous studies discussing employee performance in sharia property companies.

Customer‐company identification (CCI) refers to a social relationship between a company and its customers. Prior research highlights the positive consequences of CCI but does not study the process by which CCI shapes both positive and negative consumer reactions to new company initiatives. This study aims to elaborate this process by modelling the mediating consequences of CCI (commitment to the company and feeling of belonging to an in‐group) on consumers’ responses to brand extensions.

Data were collected from 291 respondents, spanning two companies and four brand extension scenarios. The model parameters were estimated through partial least squares path modelling.

CCI leads to commitment to the company and to a related group, through identification processes. Both forms of commitment influence consumer reactions to new corporate initiatives. The effect of company commitment is stable; in‐group commitment is more influential in forming consumer responses but varies depending on the severity of the situation.

This research elaborates the mechanisms of identity‐based commitment and its effect on consumer responses to new company initiatives. The two‐tiered, identification‐based commitment model highlights how identified customers relate to both the company and in‐groups of consumers, as a result of CCI. It explains both positive and negative consumer reactions, an insight missing from prior studies.

The purpose of this study is to examine how social media facilitates the process of customer engagement in quick service restaurants (QSRs). Customers characterized as transactional customers, loyal customers, delighted customers or fans, based on the degree of relational exchange and emotional bonds, are expected to vary in their propensity to engage in advocacy and co-create value.

Hypotheses linking the antecedents of customer engagement to advocacy are empirically investigated with data from the Twitter social media network for the top 50 US QSRs. Multiple regression analysis is carried out with proxies for advocacy as the dependent variable and connection effort, interaction effort, satisfaction, retention effort, calculative commitment and affective commitment as independent variables.

The results indicate that retention effort and calculative commitment of customers are the most important factors influencing advocacy. Efforts to retain customers using social media communication increase advocacy. Greater calculative commitment also increases advocacy. Affective commitment mediates the relationship between calculative commitment and advocacy.

Fostering retention and calculative commitment by using social media communication engenders loyalty and customers become advocates. Calculative commitment fosters affective commitment, turning customers into fans who are delighted as well as loyal, enhancing advocacy.

This study uniquely investigates the relationship between the antecedents of customer engagement and advocacy. It develops the theory and conducts an empirical analysis with actual social media network data for a specific industry where usage of the network is widely prevalent. It confirms that calculative commitment influences advocacy. Calculative commitment not only has a direct effect but also has an indirect effect through affective commitment on advocacy in the QSR context. Further, social media efforts by QSRs to retain customers encourage advocacy. Other customer engagement antecedents do not directly influence advocacy.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nature of commitments of local employees to a parent company and a local operation in comparison to the nature of commitment of Western expatriates to the two foci.

Data were collected by questionnaire from 532 local employees and 471 Western expatriates currently working for the subsidiaries of multinational companies (MNCs) in Vietnam. Hypotheses were tested using exploratory factor analyses, confirmatory factor analyses, correlation analyses, t-test, generalized linear models and hierarchical regression.

The results confirmed two distinct commitment foci and revealed that the commitment to the local operation was stronger than the commitment to the parent company for local employees. Remarkably, retention and absenteeism are more driven by local operation commitment than by parent company commitment for the local employees. In contrast, these outcomes are more driven by parent company commitment for the Western expatriates. Working conditions (job autonomy, job variety, transformational leadership and remuneration) positively predicted affective commitment to the local operation for both groups; particularly job variety and leadership were better predictors for local employees than for Western expatriates.

The comparison shows effective and specific ways to sustain and reinforce the commitments of each employee group with regard to two foci. This information may help to reduce the rate of turnover intention and absenteeism in MNCs.

By using a multifaceted approach, this study provided a comparison of dual organizational commitment for different categories of employees working in MNCs. Second, this study shows that the stronger commitment focus has a stronger influence on related outcomes (i.e. retention and absenteeism). If so, MNCs can focus on reinforcing the selected commitment focus in order to reduce the costs of management. Third, the study has initially pointed out that some work factors exert a specific influence on different commitment foci in the two groups. Controlling these work conditions is recommended to sustain and develop commitment levels of the two groups.

This paper aims to assess the status of the organizational commitment construct and introduce a new way of looking at organizational commitment – especially in early stages of employment, wherein the target company seems to be having problems.

Change in organizational commitment is measured at two points in the early employment of new salespersons in order to isolate the effects of early employment exposure of the medical representatives, a period of 18‐month when attrition of new employees is high.

Training satisfaction and perceived reward equity were the only antecedent factors that showed significant positive relationship with organizational commitment. Manager commitment showed positive contribution, the relationship was not significant. All the three antecedents significantly contributed to organizational commitment. The strongest contributor was manager commitment.

The sample time frame is limited to two data points. Additional research is needed to determine whether these variables have similar influence in other organizations or whether other antecedent variables can be identified.

Company management must pay more attention to early employment experiences. New salespersons need the training to feel competent and able to meet company mandated and/or personal objectives. Salespeople have primary contact to the organization via their immediate sales manager and need to feel like they are fairly rewarded for their efforts. Commitment to the organization partly due to a commitment to the area manager. It is important to build strong relations at the area manager level.

This effort is a by‐product of a research activity on the effectiveness a pharmaceutical company's training program for newly hired sales representatives.

The purpose of this study is to explain the stability of the alliance of “a company+farmers” from the perspective of farmers.

Based on 462 usable data collected through survey, structural equation modeling (SEM) technology was employed to examine the research model.

From farmers' perspective, the authors find that the positive correlation between alliance performance and alliance stability, relationship quality promotes alliance performance and different powers have different impacts on relationship quality. Together, these results illustrate the formation process of the stability of the alliance “a company+farmers”.

This research is limited to a particular sample: farmers from Guangdong and Hainan Province in China. Thus, the results need to be generalized to other samples.

Previous studies do not have good explanations on the formation mechanism of the stability of the alliance of “a company+farmers”. From the perspective of farmers, based on resource dependence theory, social exchange theory, this study builds an empirical model of “power‐relationship quality‐alliance performance‐alliance stability” to address the gap.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has received a large amount of attention in research and in practice. As a response to the growing awareness of and concern about social and environmental issues, an increasing number of companies are integrating their supply chains and building an alliance of “a company + farmers”. The overall research question of this study is derived from the literature, and this paper aims to identify factors that influence the integration of the agriculture supply chain and to explore the relationship between these factors and quality performance.

The analysis is based on questionnaire survey data collected from 462 Chinese farmers under the organization pattern of “a company + farmers”. A structural equation model is applied in the empirical analysis of the relations among trust, relationship commitments of different types (normative and instrumental), supply chain integration and quality performance.

An understanding of the various influences on supply chain integration and quality performance is important in relation to CSR in Chinese agriculture. The results show that supply chain integration has positive effects on quality performance. Moreover, farmers’ normative relationship commitment to the company is positively related to supply chain integration. However, farmers’ instrumental relationship commitment to the company does not significantly affect the degree of integration between farmers and companies. Furthermore, trust has positive influences on the two types of relationship commitment and on supply chain integration.

The findings provide a theoretical basis and practice guidelines for agricultural enterprises to manage CSR under the pattern of “a company + farmers”. The results help enterprises to acquire detailed information about the entire process of agricultural production, improve the quality and safety of primary agricultural products and enhance the competitiveness of Chinese agricultural products in the market.

The e-book shows that enterprises working within Chinese agriculture supply chains have a long tradition of working with CSR and supports cooperation between the European Union and China on food and agriculture.

This study aims to examine how employees’ perceptions of customer-related and employee-related corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives influence their job satisfaction. Further, the study investigates whether employees’ organizational commitment mediates this proposed relationship and, more importantly, tests how such mediated relationships change according to the level of employees’ perceptions of their company’s sincerity in investing in CSR activities.

This study used an online survey to collect data and collected a total of 490 responses for the main analysis. A regression analysis and standard path-analytic approaches described by Hayes (2013) were conducted to test the proposed hypotheses.

Findings support the main effect of customer- and employee-related CSR on employees’ job satisfaction mediated by employees’ organizational commitment, as well as the moderating effect of the perceived sincerity of customer-related CSR but not employee-related CSR.

The current study focuses on comparing two types of CSR initiatives, i.e. employee- and customer-related, because these two groups are any company’s core stakeholders with the closest relationship to its operations, and they represent the internal and external stakeholders, respectively. Further, the current study investigates the moderating effect of employees’ perceptions of the sincerity of their company’s CSR initiatives on the relationship between the two types of CSR initiatives and employees’ job commitment.

The study of international business has become increasingly important in recent years. So important that the American Assembly of the Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) has called for the internationalisation of business curricula. In 1992 and beyond, successful business people will treat the entire world as their domain. No one country can operate in an economic vacuum. Any economic measures taken by one country can affect the global economy. This book is designed to challenge the reader to develop a global perspective of international business. Globalisation is by no means a new concept, but there are many new factors that have contributed to its recently accelerated growth. Among them, the new technologies in communication and transport that have resulted in major expansions of international trade and investment. In the future, the world market will become predominant. There are bound to be big changes in the world economy. For instance the changes in Eastern Europe and the European Community during the 1990s. With a strong knowledge base in international business, future managers will be better prepared for the new world market. This book introduces its readers to the exciting and rewarding field of international management and international corporations. It is written in contemporary, easy‐to‐understand language, avoiding abstract terminology; and is organised into five sections, each of which includes a number of chapters that cover a subject involving activities that cross national boundaries.