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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the possible curvilinear relationship between empowering leadership and individual in-role and extra-role work performance and the potential moderating role of individual goal orientations.

Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted based on data from 655 certified accountants. Leaders' empowering behavior was measured using Ahearne et al.'s scale. Mastery and performance goal orientations were measured using items from VandeWalle. In-role work performance was measured via a ten-item scale developed and used by Kuvaas and Dysvik. Organizational citizenship behavior was measured using items validated by Van Dyne and LePine.

Too little empowerment might have a negative or limited impact – or none at all – on individual in-role and extra-role work performance. In addition, individual mastery orientation positively moderates these curvilinear relationships.

Empowering leadership-employee performance relationships are not necessarily linear. The present study provides an alternative explanation to the somewhat inconsistent findings in the current literature.

Due to the curvilinear nature of empowering leadership, leaders should not just casually adopt this leadership style but ensure that they implement it at high levels with clear clarification of the goals and work roles.

Even though empowering leadership is important to individual performance, scant research has explored whether and when empowering leadership could be detrimental. This study provides an additional view to empowerment research by examining the potential curvilinear influence of empowering leadership.

Most existing studies treat the relationship between experienced incivility and behavioral responses as linear. However, the current study examines the curvilinear relationships between experienced incivility and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and instigated incivility using conservation of resources (COR) theory and by referring to related studies that have identified typical positive and negative employee nontask behaviors. Furthermore, this study identifies turnover intention as a moderator of these curvilinear relationships.

All samples were obtained from respondents working for Korean companies listed on the Korean Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (KOSDAQ); 228 samples were used for the analysis. A quadratic regression function was established to analyze the curved relationships according to hierarchical stages.

Our analysis determined that a U-shaped curvilinear relationship exists between experienced incivility and OCB, and an inverted U-shaped curvilinear relationship exists between experienced and instigated incivility. However, the moderating effect of turnover intention is significant only in the relationship between experienced and instigated incivility.

This study exhibits three points of originality—first, by simultaneously considering two dependent variables as responses to experienced incivility and examining their response patterns; second, by using a curvilinear relationship model to investigate the relationship between experienced incivility and its dependent variables; and finally, by finding a moderator to the curved relationship.

This research proposes and examines a theoretical model grounded in anthropomorphism theory considering the curvilinear and linear relationships between service robot anthropomorphism and consumer usage intention and explores the mediating effect of perceived risk.

To examine the developed model, two complementary studies are designed. In Study 1, multi-time data of 511 participants show that service robot anthropomorphism inverts U-shaped (curvilinear) relationship on consumer usage intention and perceived risk mediates this curvilinear relationship. In Study 2, multi-source data of 460 volunteers are used to confirm the findings of Study 1 and examine that consumer empathy moderates the complex nonlinear effect of service robot anthropomorphism on perceived risk, and the indirect curvilinear effect of service robot anthropomorphism on consumer usage intention through perceived risk.

This research provides preliminary and yet important findings on how service robot anthropomorphism most likely is positively associated with consumer usage intention, i.e. the positively influence mechanism of service robot anthropomorphism on consumer usage intention.

This research provides preliminary and yet important findings on how service robot anthropomorphism most likely is positively associated with consumer usage intention, i.e. the positively influence mechanism of service robot anthropomorphism on consumer usage intention.

Prior studies have mainly advanced the understanding of a linear relationship between leadership humility and employee work outcomes, mediated and/or moderated by various individual, team and organizational variables. This study attempts to advance prior knowledge by investigating a potential curvilinear relationship between leadership humility and frontline service employee (FSE) performance and the role of FSE's psychological capital (PsyCap) in attenuating this curvilinear relationship.

Survey data were drawn from a survey sample of 273 FSEs working in the hospitality industry of the United States of America. Hierarchical linear regression analysis was used to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results uncover the existence of a tipping point in the relationship between leader humility and FSE performance; that is, humble behaviors expressed by leaders positively influence FSE performance up to the tipping point beyond which FSE performance starts to diminish. However, this curvilinear effect is attenuated when FSE's PsyCap is high but not when it is low.

The findings provide service managers with insights into the importance of balancing their humble behaviors to yield optimal FSE performance. Furthermore, the paper points to the need for FSE's PsyCap cultivation within service firms so that FSEs are less dependent on their supervisors and can deliver highly satisfactory results.

This research is one of the very first to investigate the curvilinear relationship between leader humility and FSE performance and the moderating role of PsyCap in attenuating the curvilinear effect.

Drawing upon the “too-much-of-a-good-thing (TMGT)” effect and conservation of resources (COR) theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine the mediation mechanism between empowering leadership and employee job performance. Specifically, the authors propose a curvilinear relationship between empowering leadership and job performance, and also suggest that employee harmonious and obsessive work passions mediate the curvilinear relationship between empowering leadership and job performance. Further the moderation role of collectivism orientation (CO) in the relationship between empowering leadership and job performance is also examined.

Questionnaires are used to obtain survey data from 256 supervisor–subordinate dyads in three companies in the communication sector of Ghana. A follow-up interview was also conducted to enhance explanation of research findings. Hierarchical regression analysis is used to analyze the associations among the variables.

The results revealed that the significant inverted U-shaped relationship between empowering leadership and subordinate job performance is mediated by both harmonious and obsessive passion for work. A significant moderation effect of CO in the empowering leadership–job performance relationship could not be established.

This study adapts the “TMGT” effect and COR theory in the explanation of an integrated model including empowering leadership, job performance, employee passion for work, and CO in the Ghanaian context.

This study focuses on service quality and satisfaction judgments of customers in banking institutions throughout Malaysia. The study attempts to determine the relationship between service quality and satisfaction, where service quality is the independent variable and satisfaction is the dependent variable. On top of this, the inclusion of ownership as a moderator has also been studied. Findings show that service quality is the antecedent of satisfaction. The findings also support a curvilinear relationship for the variables under study. The results also show that bank‐ownership moderates the relationship between service quality and satisfaction. Hierarchical moderator regression is used to test the moderating effect. Implications and future research are also discussed.

Contrary to the widely held belief in the linear positive effects of business relationships (BRELs) on performance outcomes, the authors posit that the quality of a manager's BRELs with a foreign business partner has an inverted curvilinear effect on managing challenges arising out of institutional differences between two countries, which the authors define as institutional success. The authors further propose that managers' global role complexity (GRC) negatively impacts institutional success and dampens the inverted curvilinear effects of BRELs on institutional success.

The proposed model is tested using questionnaire survey data from 186 senior Indian managers doing business with New Zealand.

The authors find significant support for the inverted curvilinear effects of BRELs and the negative effects of GRC on institutional success. They did not find significant results for the moderating role of GRC on the inverted curvilinear relationship between BRELs and institutional success. However, significant linear interactive effects of GRC and BREL are evident.

The key managerial implication is that managers should focus on building BRELs of appropriate quality with their overseas counterparts to keep producing relational rents. They should, however, also be sensitive to when such relational rents start to be eroded by internal and external factors and treat them as a dynamic equilibrium rather than a static one.

The study findings challenge the assumption of linear positive effects of BRELs within the relational view. They highlight the significance of BRELs, even for emerging economy managers doing business in advanced economies.

Drawing from resource-based theory, the authors aim to study how and under what conditions small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) capitalise on their proactive entrepreneurial behaviour (PEB) to achieve new product development (NPD) performance.

The authors’ data were drawn from a cross-sectional questionnaire survey of 401 UK-based SMEs in the manufacturing sector.

The authors identify an upward curvilinear relationship between PEB and NPD performance. Taking a step further, the authors propose and confirm that this curvilinear association arises from, in part, SMEs’ innovation capability, which in turn translates into NPD performance. The authors also find that this upward curvilinear relationship between PEB and innovation capability flips to a downward curvilinear relationship when firms pursue a customer and competitor orientation.

This paper looks beyond the linear relationship that exists among entrepreneurial behaviour, market orientation and innovation outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to explicate the influence of diverse team on team-level ambidexterity and its curvilinear assessment, and test the mediating role of team reflexivity and the moderating role of shared meta-knowledge in the curvilinear relationship between team diversity and team ambidexterity.

The authors collected multisource and temporally separated data on 206 R&D teams within 28 high-tech firms in Taiwan.

This study found a complex, curvilinear, moderated mediation relationship that functional background diversity has with team ambidexterity. Furthermore, consistent with the notion from categorization-elaboration model, the authors found the curvilinear relationship that functional background diversity has with both team ambidexterity and team reflexivity. Finally, the authors also found that the curvilinear relationship between functional background diversity and team reflexivity was moderated by shared meta-knowledge, such that the positive relationship was strengthened and the negative relationship weakened, in higher shared meta-knowledge in teams rather than lower.

The results demonstrate that team diversity-team ambidexterity relationship is much more complicated than previous works have assumed or suggested. Overall, the authors contribute to a novel understanding about the importance of team diversity in ambidextrous teams by opening the black box of how and when functional background diversity and team ambidexterity.

The purpose of this paper is to understand e-loyalty in the travel industry. Specifically, this paper aims to examine the curvilinear relationship between predictors and e-loyalty.

An empirical study was conducted using an online survey with one of the largest travel companies in China. Structural equation modeling was used to test the models, and pair-wise nested F-tests were used to compare the models.

Results show that the curvilinear model has greater explanatory power of loyalty than traditional linear models. The results of pair-wise nested F-tests show that the loyalty model exhibits statistically significant R2 improvement compared to the linear model. However, the R2 improvement in the integrated model is not statistically different from that in the linear model. Confirmation and satisfaction are found to be salient factors influencing loyalty.

This study makes important contributions to the online community literature by understanding the drivers of loyalty in the travel industry. However, there are limitations. First, this study addressed member loyalty of an online travel community with data collected from one company. Thus, generalizability is limited. Online communities and firms may have different characteristics, resulting in different factors influencing consumer loyalty. The authors plan in the future to collect data from other online travel companies and examine their model with different samples so as to check the generalizability of the current findings. Second, the authors collected a snapshot view on loyalty. Both researchers and managers note that small changes in loyalty and retention can yield disproportionately large changes in profitability (Reichheld et al., 2000). Consumer loyalty may change over time, so to maintain and increase profits, it is important to monitor such change. In the future, the authors plan to conduct a longitudinal study of community members to evaluate their loyalty over time.

As China seeks to gain additional market share in the global tourism market, travel companies should make use of websites as a marketing tool to attract and retain customers. These actions enable a travel company to enhance its competitiveness. More and more people use the internet for tour deals, bookings and finding tour-related information. Effective use of websites can affect the competitiveness of ecommerce companies. E-vendors could assess and adopt the dimensions recommended in this paper to help better understand areas for improvement. It is common today for consumers to buy travel products online instead of going through a travel agent. Considering the importance of reciprocity in formulating consumer satisfaction and loyalty in the virtual environment, companies should monitor reciprocal behavior on the virtual community. With advancement in technologies, consumer behaviors have changed and more consumers prefer social interactions in the virtual world. Companies can analyze posts in the virtual environment to assess reciprocity and may design a mechanism to foster reciprocal behaviors. By leveraging reciprocity, firms can better connect satisfaction with loyalty. More than 70 per cent of executives surveyed by McKinsey (2012) said that they regularly generate value through their Web communities. In addition, to pay attention to consumer to consumer reciprocity in the virtual world, companies should listen to what customers say in their online community, as this attention is an indication of reciprocity between consumers and companies. The ideas and opinions expressed in the online community tell the company customers’ perception of the value of its products and customers’ needs. Such attention to the voices in the online community will help companies to better tailor products/services to meet customers’ needs. Furthermore, the voices expressed in the virtual community are also effective in developing and maintaining new internet marketing opportunities such as email marketing, giveaways, search engine optimization, pay per click and shopping comparison marketing. Companies interested in retaining and attracting customers should leverage their established virtual communities and pay close attention to online posts and evaluate members’ satisfaction. Such effort will provide tangible benefits. As shown in Ye et al.’s study, traveler reviews produce a significant impact on online sales (Ye et al., 2011), with a 10 per cent increase in traveler review ratings, boosting online bookings by more than 5 per cent. This finding suggests that businesses should link online user-generated reviews to business performance in tourism. Finding incentives for users to share might be one way to improve interactivity and further create stickiness on the part of the website.

This paper is one of the first studies to address the need to move beyond linear models of e-loyalty and to additionally examine potential curvilinear and interactive effects. This study also identifies key variables such as reciprocity and satisfaction as determinants of e-loyalty in the Chinese online travel and tourism industry.