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This article aims to provide business managers and executives with a framework of how to best utilize and implement teams in the workplace so as to maximize both internal and external diversified skill sets capabilities in team members.

A combination of primary and secondary research was conducted to highlight and strengthen the authors' views and opinions. The original ideas and basic concepts are based upon the authors' own experiences.

Companies have much to gain from utilizing teams and teamwork within and across corporate boundaries. Success is more likely to be achieved if the team has certain core characteristics. In addition, a heterogeneous team composition could optimize efficiency, quality, and innovation. By collaborating and teaming with external parties companies can overcome internal resource limitations and achieve competitive advantage, greater profitability and maximize chances for long‐term survival.

The article is primarily based upon the authors' own experiences and opinions, which may differ from results of studies and research done on the subject. The secondary research was limited. The survey conducted by the authors was not scientifically constructed. The sample size was small (n=32) but yet statistically significant and based upon a convenience sample.

The article may help company executives and managers who want go get the most out of their employees and enhance their work teams' productivity levels, output quality, and creativity.

The article is a clear and concise read relating to a highly relevant business topic. It takes a multi‐level approach to the concept of teams in the workplace, and could serve as a good guide to business leaders on how to create the most efficient and effective work environment for their employees that will ultimately result in more successful and profitable operations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the applicability of social feminist theory (SFT) and liberal feminist theory (LFT) to Lao micro, small, and medium‐sized enterprises (MSMEs) based on the results of mediation and moderation effects of the gender of entrepreneurs.

The sample consisted of 200 MSMEs. Analysis is based, first, on factor analysis to extract important factors and, second, multiple linear regression is used to empirically validate the feminist theories by examining the mediation effects and moderation effects regarding gender of entrepreneurs.

The findings showed that not all feminist‐related factors mediate the relationship between gender and non‐economic performance whereas the gender of entrepreneurs moderates personal, social network, and skills factors and non‐economic performance but not family factor. Lastly, the compilation of the mediation and moderation results revealed that SFT is more applicable than LFT to Lao MSMEs.

This research had some limitations such as the lack of empirical literature supporting non‐economic performance indicators. Therefore, the findings should not be generalized.

This research provided implications for policymakers, implementers, and academics. The results showed that it is necessary to support female entrepreneurs in terms of the use of personal, social, and skills factors to improve non‐economic performance. However, it is not necessary to support family factor in improving endowments and changing their use. Governments must mitigate the gender gap at macro levels through the elimination of gender discrimination, such as in education, banking practice, and the workplace, to increase the long‐term confidence of females in society.

The unique contribution of the study is to prove the applicability of SFT and LFT by quantitative analytical methodologies with focusing on non‐economic firm performance.

Human resource (HR) flexibility is a firm-level capability that consists of employee skill flexibility, employee behavior flexibility, and HR practice flexibility. HR flexibility allows organizations to adapt and be responsive to changes in their environments. Findings from this paper indicate that if the organization is highly innovative and has flexible HR policies, then that influences organizational culture, risk-taking and experimentation within a firm. This paper has also revealed that process innovation mediates between adaptability culture and product innovation. It also revealed that managers should emphasize processes to improve efficiency for resource exploitation. The lessons learned from process innovation activities indicated that having a strong knowledge base assists a firm in developing innovative technology such as automation for manufacturing, handling and testing or simply smart manufacturing.

Questionnaires were sent to employees at 23 Taiwanese companies in high-tech industries, where innovation is the key to their survival, and 293 valid surveys were collected. Structural equation modeling, (SEM) using IBM SPSS Amos, was used to test the hypotheses.

The results fully support the hypotheses that HR flexibility positively influences adaptability culture and contributes to organizational innovation. Furthermore, it was found that adaptability culture has a direct impact on process innovation and an indirect impact on product innovation through process innovation.

The critical role of HR flexibility and adaptability culture on organizational innovation in the high-tech sector were highlighted. The importance of HR flexibility is emphasized to provide managerial hints to top managers.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the important factors which need to be taken into consideration to manage a diversified team. It also aims to provide business managers and executives with a framework of how to best utilize and implement teams in the workplace so as to maximize both internal and external diversified skill sets and capabilities in team members.

An extensive review of existing literature was done to form the views of the authors on the issue. A strengths, weaknesses, oppositions, threats (SWOT) analysis of diversified teams was done with the help of secondary research. The concept is based on the author's own practical experience. A combination of primary and secondary research was used to highlight and strengthen the author views and opinions. The original ideas and basic concepts are based on the author's own experiences.

The study found the maximum benefits of a diversified team. The findings show that effective teamwork requires members to recognize the team as a unit with common goals, values, and norms. The more that team members identify with each other, the more likely they are to believe they hold similar goals.

The paper is an attempt to express the real organizational scenario which is based on a sample of 20 corporate executives who dealt with a similar issue. The industries selected were in Delhi – NCR. There is reason to believe that if study had to be done in some other parts of the county, results may have been different. The sample taken was not very big, and was also non‐random. A large sample may have different results.

The study includes an extensive analysis of the organizational diversity and its impact on the performance of the organizations. This may help business practitioners to encourage diversity in the workplace while improving teamwork, communication and cooperation among team members.

The paper highlights the different attributes of a diversified team. With the help of primary research and well‐supported secondary research, a good attempt is made to trace the four corners of leading a diversified team. It can help future managers to guide a diversified team for good team performance.

Entrepreneurship is currently at the focus of much theoretical, practical and political interest. In Europe, agriculture has faced dramatic pressures for restructuring, and facilitation of the entrepreneurial skills of farmers and stronger entrepreneurial orientation in the rural areas have been hailed as possible solutions for the emerging problems. The aim of this paper is to use this nexus of agriculture and entrepreneurship as an illustrative example, through which the nature of entrepreneurial skills and the elements underpinning their adoption can be examined.

The task is carried out by reflecting theoretically on the concept of entrepreneurial skills and on their embedded nature, before demonstrating the usefulness of the concept as a tool in understanding the case of an enterprising Finnish farmer, active both in conventional farming and in diversified business.

The theoretical and case study analyses reveal that the concept of entrepreneurial skills is far from an unambiguous one, as well as is the aim to develop them through teaching. If proper care is taken to distinguish the concept from, and relate it to, the elements in which it is embedded, the notion is a useful tool for empirical investigation. By applying such a procedure, it is shown that the contexts of conventional farming and business diversification call for clearly different entrepreneurial skills, some of which are more amenable to teaching than others.

This paper shows how one can develop a fuller understanding of the skills that farmers need to become entrepreneurial by diversification.

The purpose of this article is to explore the strategy of an enterprising farmer. The background problematic is that in Europe, agriculture has faced dramatic pressures for restructuring, and facilitation of the strategic skills of farmers and a stronger entrepreneurial orientation have been suggested as a possible solution for the emerging problems. We use an illustrative case to show how strategy formation and implementation may require different skills, competencies and attitudes.

A case study is used to examine the issues of strategy formation and implementation. Whilst the findings from the case may not be generalisable, our analysis provides an opportunity to conceptually reflect on the issues. These issues may have wider implications beyond the research site.

The theoretical and case study analyses reveal that the concept of entrepreneurial strategy is ambiguous. Yet, if proper care is taken to distinguish the concept from, and relate it to, the elements in which it is embedded, the notion is a useful tool for both theory and empirical investigation. By applying such a procedure, we show that the contexts of conventional farming and business diversification call for an understanding about the clearly different entrepreneurial skills and appropriate strategies and strategic implementation.

This research suggests that a major challenge for the agricultural sector is to enable farmers to develop their strategic, marketing and entrepreneurial skills. This requires economic support and greater emphasis on education and training. It is hoped that this research will assist in this challenge.

This study investigates how university libraries in Nigeria are staffed and presents staff development opportunities and learning activities that sustain staff.

A survey research design was adopted. Purposive sampling technique was used to select 46 universities and 400 respondents consisting of 46 heads of libraries and 354 professionals from federal, state, and private universities. Content of the instrument was based on literature comprising six questions. The 327 (92.4%) usable responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics and presented in simple frequency tables.

The study showed that library workforce in Nigerian universities included different categories of professionals and para-professionals having diversified job opportunities and duties. Most libraries had staff development budget and respondents received various forms of assistance to foster learning. Although all nontransferable skills recorded high mean, respondents accorded less importance to nonlibrary personal skills that can be used to leverage the expectations of recruitment, retention, and sustainability.

The study was limited to practicing professionals but has staffing implications for all libraries across Nigeria.

Many professionals may lack the appropriate multi-skills that would enhance exploring new approaches and breaking out of traditional ways of operation in the different library and outside library settings.

The study contributes to knowledge about sustaining library staff in relation to adopting the recommended skills on a broad scale, and assessing how their acquisition can change the perception of professionals to its immense contributions to sustaining them in the workforce.

The purpose of this paper is to incorporate the resource-based perspective with upper echelon theory to examine the effect of top management teams’ (TMTs) managerial resources on international diversification.

The authors sampled 360 listed companies in the USA that operated in the information technology industry in 2009, the year after the financial crisis.

The findings show that TMTs’ tenure has a negative impact on international diversification but international experience exerts a positive impact on international diversification. Furthermore, TMTs’ educational background diversity and international experience contribute to a reduction in the negative effect of tenure on international diversification.

Prior studies have investigated the role of TMT in international diversification, but they pay less attention to the interactive effect of the variety of managerial resources on international diversification. In particular, the authors examined the effect of a variety of management resources on the level of international diversification under the uncertain environment.

Discusses issues relating to professional development and manpower training in Kenya. Provides background information on the libraries and information sciences training programmes situation. Gives attention to issues and trends affecting the information profession in training, curricula development, application of information technology, cost of information materials and the crisis in supply and demand in regard to manpower development in the information profession. Suggests that institutions for training information professionals need to observe the supply and demand trends in their environment and to adjust both the curricula and intake of trainees to the national situation. The training institutions also need to broaden the courses offered in their programmes to include computer skills, communication studies, economics of information, marketing, research methodologies, management, publishing and booktrade, resource sharing and continuing education. The market for information professionals needs to be provided with products with diversified knowledge and skills. Concludes with observations on how the problems of manpower development and training in information sciences in Kenya may be handled.

Unlike previous studies on capital structure decisions, the purpose of this paper is to focus on US real estate investment trusts (REITs) in order to find out the main determinants of capital structure choice for real estate companies and in order to verify if they are related to factors similar to those affecting the decisions of public firms in other sectors.

Using a methodology similar to Rajan and Zingales, a sample of 119 listed REITs with different investment strategies and in different property sectors was analyzed. The analysis is carried out in order to determine the basic factors underpinning the capital structures by selecting financial items and ratios related with leverage (such as asset size, profitability ratios, tangibility of assets, growth opportunities, operating risk and geographical diversification of investments).

Results show that REITs follow a pecking order theory of financing since more profitable firms are less levered and REITs with more growth opportunities have higher leverage ratios. The tangibility of assets turns out to be positively correlated with leverage, while REITs whose operating risk is high prefer a lower financial risk and consequently a lower gearing. Finally, it is not clear how size affects leverage decisions and more diversified REITs appear to be riskier.

The research also addresses the issue of asymmetric information and the debt‐equity choice for REITs sampled on the basis of their size, highlighting differences with other business sectors.