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Information and communications technology (ICT) offers enormous opportunities for individuals, businesses and society. The application of ICT is equally important to economic and non-economic activities. Researchers have increasingly focused on the adoption and use of ICT by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as the economic development of a country is largely dependent on them. Following the success of ICT utilisation in SMEs in developed countries, many developing countries are looking to utilise the potential of the technology to develop SMEs. Past studies have shown that the contribution of ICT to the performance of SMEs is not clear and certain. Thus, it is crucial to determine the effectiveness of ICT in generating firm performance since this has implications for SMEs’ expenditure on the technology. This research examines the diffusion of ICT among SMEs with respect to the typical stages from innovation adoption to post-adoption, by analysing the actual usage of ICT and value creation. The mediating effects of integration and utilisation on SME performance are also studied. Grounded in the innovation diffusion literature, institutional theory and resource-based theory, this study has developed a comprehensive integrated research model focused on the research objectives. Following a positivist research paradigm, this study employs a mixed-method research approach. A preliminary conceptual framework is developed through an extensive literature review and is refined by results from an in-depth field study. During the field study, a total of 11 SME owners or decision-makers were interviewed. The recorded interviews were transcribed and analysed using NVivo 10 to refine the model to develop the research hypotheses. The final research model is composed of 30 first-order and five higher-order constructs which involve both reflective and formative measures. Partial least squares-based structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) is employed to test the theoretical model with a cross-sectional data set of 282 SMEs in Bangladesh. Survey data were collected using a structured questionnaire issued to SMEs selected by applying a stratified random sampling technique. The structural equation modelling utilises a two-step procedure of data analysis. Prior to estimating the structural model, the measurement model is examined for construct validity of the study variables (i.e. convergent and discriminant validity).

The estimates show cognitive evaluation as an important antecedent for expectation which is shaped primarily by the entrepreneurs’ beliefs (perception) and also influenced by the owners’ innovativeness and culture. Culture further influences expectation. The study finds that facilitating condition, environmental pressure and country readiness are important antecedents of expectation and ICT use. The results also reveal that integration and the degree of ICT utilisation significantly affect SMEs’ performance. Surprisingly, the findings do not reveal any significant impact of ICT usage on performance which apparently suggests the possibility of the ICT productivity paradox. However, the analysis finally proves the non-existence of the paradox by demonstrating the mediating role of ICT integration and degree of utilisation explain the influence of information technology (IT) usage on firm performance which is consistent with the resource-based theory. The results suggest that the use of ICT can enhance SMEs’ performance if the technology is integrated and properly utilised. SME owners or managers, interested stakeholders and policy makers may follow the study’s outcomes and focus on ICT integration and degree of utilisation with a view to attaining superior organisational performance.

This study urges concerned business enterprises and government to look at the environmental and cultural factors with a view to achieving ICT usage success in terms of enhanced firm performance. In particular, improving organisational practices and procedures by eliminating the traditional power distance inside organisations and implementing necessary rules and regulations are important actions for managing environmental and cultural uncertainties. The application of a Bengali user interface may help to ensure the productivity of ICT use by SMEs in Bangladesh. Establishing a favourable national technology infrastructure and legal environment may contribute positively to improving the overall situation. This study also suggests some changes and modifications in the country’s existing policies and strategies. The government and policy makers should undertake mass promotional programs to disseminate information about the various uses of computers and their contribution in developing better organisational performance. Organising specialised training programs for SME capacity building may succeed in attaining the motivation for SMEs to use ICT. Ensuring easy access to the technology by providing loans, grants and subsidies is important. Various stakeholders, partners and related organisations should come forward to support government policies and priorities in order to ensure the productive use of ICT among SMEs which finally will help to foster Bangladesh’s economic development.

To describe the development of a survey instrument designed to measure consumer perceptions of the broadband adoption within the UK households.

A survey research approach was employed to achieve overall aim and following three objectives of this research: to identify initial items that may help to explain the broadband adoption behaviour and determine them employing an exploratory survey approach; to confirm the representativeness of items to a particular construct domain employing content validity approach; and finally, to test the instrument in order to confirm the reliability of items and construct validity.

The final outcome of the instrument development process that culminated from the confirmatory study was a parsimonious, 39‐item instrument, consisting of ten scales, all with acceptable levels of content validity, reliability and construct validity.

The developed instrument is relevant to both academic and practitioner communities who hold a particular interest in the study and management of broadband adoption from the household consumer perspective.

The most conspicuous contribution of the paper is to provide a reliable instrument that is fundamental to measure the household consumer's perceptions of adopting broadband internet.

New measures in marketing are invariably created by using a psychometric approach based on Churchill's “scale development” procedure. This paper aims to compare and contrast Churchill's procedure with Rossiter's content‐validity approach to measurement, called C‐OAR‐SE.

The comparison of the two procedures is by rational argument and forms the theoretical first half of the paper. In the applied second half of the paper, three recent articles from the Journal of Marketing (JM) that introduce new constructs and measures are criticized and corrected from the C‐OAR‐SE perspective.

The C‐OAR‐SE method differs from Churchill's method by arguing for: total emphasis on achieving high content validity of the item(s) and answer scale – without which nothing else matters; use of single‐item measures for “basic” constructs and for the first‐order components of “abstract” constructs; abandonment of the “reflective” measurement model, along with its associated statistical techniques of factor analysis and coefficient alpha, arguing that all abstract constructs must be measured as “formative”; and abandonment of external validation methods, notably multitrait‐multimethod analysis (MTMM) and structural equation modeling (SEM), to be replaced by internal content‐validation of the measure itself. The C‐OAR‐SE method can be applied – as demonstrated in the last part of the article – by any verbally intelligent researcher. However, less confident researchers may need to seek the assistance of one or two colleagues who fully understand the new method.

If a measure is not highly content‐valid to begin with – and none of the new measures in the JM articles criticized is highly content‐valid – then no subsequent psychometric properties can save it. Highly content‐valid measures are absolutely necessary for proper tests of theories and hypotheses, and for obtaining trustworthy findings in marketing.

C‐OAR‐SE is completely original and Rossiter's updated version should be followed. C‐OAR‐SE is leading the necessary marketing measurement revolution.

We develop and validate measurement instruments for the business partner, watchdog, and scorekeeper roles of controllers. This study addresses calls to enhance the quality of survey research in management accounting by devoting more attention to scale development and especially to construct validity. By focusing on the activity sets of the controllers’ roles, we provide a theoretically and empirically grounded picture of their current roles. The measurement instruments presented in this study enable systematic research progress on controller roles, their relationships, antecedents, and performance outcomes.

Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.

The purpose of this paper is to review and extend recent simulation studies on discriminant validity measures, contrasting the use of cutoff values (i.e. heuristics) with inferential tests.

Based on a simulation study, which considers different construct correlations, sample sizes, numbers of indicators and loading patterns, the authors assess each criterion’s sensitivity to type I and type II errors.

The findings of the simulation study provide further evidence for the robustness of the heterotrait–monotrait (HTMT) ratio of correlations criterion as an estimator of disattenuated (perfectly reliable) correlations between constructs, whose performance parallels that of the standard constrained PHI approach. Furthermore, the authors identify situations in which both methods fail and suggest an alternative criterion.

Addressing the limitations of prior simulation studies, the authors use both directional comparisons (i.e. heuristics) and inferential tests to facilitate the comparison of the HTMT and PHI methods. Furthermore, the simulation considers criteria that have not been assessed in prior research.

Addresses the standardization of the measurements and the labels for concepts commonly used in the study of work organizations. As a reference handbook and research tool, seeks to improve measurement in the study of work organizations and to facilitate the teaching of introductory courses in this subject. Focuses solely on work organizations, that is, social systems in which members work for money. Defines measurement and distinguishes four levels: nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio. Selects specific measures on the basis of quality, diversity, simplicity and availability and evaluates each measure for its validity and reliability. Employs a set of 38 concepts ‐ ranging from “absenteeism” to “turnover” as the handbook’s frame of reference. Concludes by reviewing organizational measurement over the past 30 years and recommending future measurement reseach.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the suitability of the multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) matrix approach for examining construct validity in human resource management (HRM) research. The authors also provide a number of suggestions on how to use MTMM more effectively in HRM research.

The authors start by presenting a basic introduction to MTMM approach. Next the authors briefly review the limitations of MTMM approach and suggested improvements. The authors elaborate on these limitations by providing HRM examples. To further illustrate these issues, the authors review employment interview research.

The construct validity analysis in HRM research suffers from three problematic assumptions of the classical MTMM approach: uncorrelated trait-method units, uncorrelated methods, and uncorrelated traits. The review of interview research shows that classical MTMM approach is by far the most popular approach given its relative simplicity and modest sample size requirements. This popularity stresses the significance of the review in highlighting these issues.

Several improvements to quantify the interpretations of MTMM analysis are available to researchers. This review closely examines how these limitations and proposed improvements influence HRM research, thereby making the methodological advances concerning the MTMM approach more accessible to HRM researchers and practitioners.

The aim of this study is to contribute to the construct validity of leadership styles. Although several theories of leadership emerged in the past decades, integrative research on leadership constructs is rare. Thus, for the first time, the present study critically tests whether the leadership constructs of transformational and transactional leadership, consideration and initiating structure, and leader‐member‐exchange are convergent, or whether they exhibit discriminant validities, as hypothesized by theory.

Applying hierarchical structural equation modeling to the multitrait‐multimethod (MTMM) approach, the present study explored the convergent and discriminant validity of leadership constructs based on data from multiple sources. Altogether, N=148 dyads of leaders and subordinates from various industries in Germany participated in the present study.

Results demonstrated evidence for the convergence of the leadership constructs.

In leadership feedback projects in organizations, practitioners should utilize multiple rating perspectives for adequate descriptions of leadership behaviors.

Interestingly, approximately the same amount of variance in the data was due to the rating sources as it was to the leadership constructs, suggesting strong method effects in leadership research. The present study was among the first MTMM approaches that addressed the construct validity of several leadership constructs simultaneously and thus, allows new insight into the overall network of leadership theories.