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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.

It was the purpose of this study to identify areas of teacher motivation by determining teacher needs and their relationship to job satisfaction. This objective was pursued by applying the concept of higher and lower order need strength to secondary public school teachers. This concept was first developed and applied in business administration as a means of measuring worker motivation. It is based on the assumption that a match between the needs experienced by the individual and the needs fulfilled by the job bring greater job satisfaction and thus an increase in job productivity. While a predominance of higher order needs in secondary school teachers was found, the correlation of need strength and job satisfaction varied by school district. Apparently teaching in some schools is more satisfying to teachers with lower order needs while teaching in other schools is more satisfying to teachers with higher order needs.

Educational researchers have long been concerned with role stress among teachers. In education, research on the consequences of such role stress for teachers has largely concerned outcomes valued by individuals such as job satisfaction and reduced stress. Less research has focused on examining the effects of role stress on outcomes valued by the organization, such as employee commitment and employee retention. In examining the role stress‐outcome relationship, research suggests the importance of taking into consideration the work orientations of individuals as possible moderators of the role stress‐outcome relationship. Using a sample of elementary and secondary teachers, this study empirically examined, first whether three role stresses – role ambiguity, role conflict, and role overload – are related to two individually and two organizationally valued states and second, whether teachers’ higher‐order need strength moderates these role stress‐outcome relationships. The study found that role stresses relate to individually‐ and organizationally‐valued outcomes among both elementary and secondary teachers.

Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) has attracted much attention from both methodological and applied researchers in various disciplines – also in hospitality management research. As PLS-SEM is relatively new compared to other multivariate analysis techniques, there are still numerous open questions and uncertainties in its application. This study aims to address this important issue by offering guidance regarding its use in contexts with which researchers struggle.

The authors examine the most prominent questions and answers posed in a well-known PLS-SEM discussion forum. The authors do so by using a text analysis technique to identify the most salient topics.

The data analysis identifies three salient PLS-SEM topics (i.e. bootstrapping and significance testing, higher-order constructs and moderation).

The results allow us to address the PLS-SEM community’s main methodological issues. The authors discuss each area separately and provide explanations and guidelines.

The guidelines on the most important PLS-SEM topics provide decision-making and application aids. In this way, the authors make a decisive contribution to clarifying ambiguities when applying the PLS-SEM method in hospitality management research and other disciplines.

There has as yet been no systematic analysis of this kind in the field of PLS-SEM; the authors, therefore, present the first research results. The findings and recommendations provide guidance for PLS-SEM applications in hospitality research and practice.

Summarizes previous research on the links between multinationality and earnings persistence and presents a study which applies the autoregressive, integrated, moving‐average time series model to 1990‐1999 data on the largest US multinationals. Explains the methodology and presents the results, which show a negative relationship between the level of multinationality and earnings persistence measures. Puts this down to a negative link between multinationality and performance; and reduced risk through international diversification and profit stabilization.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a reliable and valid scale with desirable psychometric properties and sufficient level of reliability and validity to measure sustainable consumption from consumer perspective.

In achieving this objective: the domain of the construct is specified; items are generated through qualitative interviews; the initial scale is purified, and finally it is validated. A survey yielded 1,002 complete, usable questionnaires in order to run the analysis. Data were splitted in half. First half was utilised for exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and the second half of the data were utilised to run confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The initial pool of item was tested using EFA via SPSS version 23. The CFA was conducted using SmartPLS-3.2.7 to confirm the dimensionality of sustainable consumption behaviour (SCB) scale.

The EFA result revealed that SCB is a three-dimensional construct which is consisted of 24 items. The scale includes: quality of life; care for environmental well-being; and care for the future generation. The CFA confirmed the dimensionality, reliability and validity of the SCB scale.

This sustainable consumption scale can be used to determine individual’s level of responsibility towards living a quality life, environment welfare, as well as responsibility towards sustainability of the future generation. It is expected that this initiative will stimulate further research on regional, cultural and demographic differences in understanding sustainable development.

Marketing practitioners may benefit from this scale by understanding the SCB of the socially and environmentally conscious consumers. It may eventually assist them to shape their strategies to meet the increasing demands of environmentalists.

The notion of sustainable consumption received significant research attention in present decade. It is regarded as one of the major catalysts of the sustainable development. However, in most cases sustainable consumption phenomenon is discussed from greater economic perspective and not much effort has been paid to consider it from consumer’s perspective. Furthermore, there is a lack of readily available scale to measure this construct in the existing literature.

This article aims to constructively critique the new global methodology for evaluating the effectiveness of anti-money laundering regimes against defined outcomes.

With surprisingly little discussion at the intersection of the money laundering and policy effectiveness and outcomes scholarship and practice, this article combines elements of these disciplines and recent peer-review evaluations, to qualitatively assess the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF’s) anti-money laundering “effectiveness” methodology.

FATF’s “effectiveness” methodology does not yet reflect an outcome-oriented framework as it purports. Misapplication of outcome labels to outputs and activities miss an opportunity to evaluate outcomes, as the impact and effect of anti-money laundering policies.

If the “outcomes” of the “effectiveness” framework do not match the crime and terrorism prevention policy goals of nation states, the new “main” component for assessing the effectiveness of anti-money laundering regimes potentially detracts focus and resources from, rather than towards, intended policy objectives.

There is a dearth of scholarship whether the global anti-money laundering “effectiveness” framework is sufficiently robust to assess effectiveness as it purports. This article begins addressing that gap.

This paper aims to introduce the Schmid–Leiman solution (SLS) as a useful tool to interpret the results of higher-order factor analyses in marketing research irrespective of the type of higher-order factor structure used (formative or reflective).

Two studies, one with retail shoppers in India and another with undergraduate students in Hong Kong, are used to compare different types of higher-order factor structures to test the utility of SLS.

The authors show that whether a reflective or a formative model is used to operationalize a higher-order construct, using SLS as an additional analysis gives useful insights into the factor structure at different levels and helps isolate their unique contributions to the explained variance.

The authors test higher-order models for store environment and consumer impulsiveness with data from retail shoppers and undergraduate students in two Asian countries, which may restrict the generalizability of the study findings. Future research may try to replicate our findings with other higher-order constructs and consumers in other countries.

The authors offer a checklist that can be used by future researchers to evaluate alternate higher-order factor structures and choose the appropriate one for their research context.

The authors show that using SLS is especially useful when there is a lack of clarity on the nature of relationships between the factors at different levels or about the independent contribution of the factors at different levels, in a higher-order factor structure.

There is a growing array of literature that supports various implications of positive organizational psychology on workplace outcomes such as the positive work cultures. However, lack of appropriate measuring instruments is halting the progress in this field. Laid down in this article are the conceptual and empirical perspective regarding a positive group culture, i.e. meaningful group culture (MGC) and elaboration of what MGC is and how to measure it. For this study, the MGC is defined as a culture of humane orientation and explained through five dimensions: ideology infused, caring for employees, pro diversity, helping and employee-centric organization identification. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

To further elucidate, development and validation of the MGC instrument was carried out in three phases. In the very first phase, content and face validity was assessed by experts. Following it, the second phase construct validity was undertaken through exploratory factor analysis of the results from the use of the instrument on a sample of 540 professionals. To end with, in the third phase, multilevel confirmatory analysis was conducted on an organizational sample of 397 individuals and 106 groups.

The results of the Multilevel Confirmatory Factor Analysis (MCFA) provided further evidence of confirmation that the extraction of five factors was appropriate, and reliability analysis showed the MGC to be both valid and reliable. Consequently, the applications of the tool to Human Resource Development (HRD) professionals are suggested.

To broaden the coverage and enhance generalizability, the study focused on multi-sector convenient based sample.

HRD professionals can use it as a diagnostic tool for deeper exploration into systematic and organizational issues. The use of it can provide a window for addressing the developmental needs within the organizations.

This study is possibly one of the first to develop a psychometrically valid scale to measure higher order measure of a work group culture through multilevel assessment of the model.

The purpose of this study is to develop and empirically test a lovemark measure that can be used to identify how brands of wireless-enabled computing devices are classified based on customers’ respect and love toward them.

On evidence drawn from 1,016 consumers of wireless-enabled computing devices (e.g. netbooks and tablets) in Greece, partial least squares method is used to test the validity of the proposed hierarchical model.

Results show that a lovemark measure can be conceptualized as a third-order reflective construct having respect and love as its second-order dimensions. In turn, respect reflects on brand performance, trust and reputation, and love reflects on brand commitment, intimacy and passion. The proposed measure presents a very good external validity as it can explain big portions of variance in consumer responses including repurchase intentions, positive WOM and willingness to pay a price premium. Finally, the proposed measure is used to classify eight well-known devices as products, fads, brands and lovemarks and identify the love styles associated with brand relationships.

This paper provides empirical evidence for measuring and identifying lovemarks using a hierarchical model, which can be further used to develop a more effective strategy for managing the functional and emotional aspects of brands to strengthen consumer-brand relationships.

El objetivo de este estudio es el desarrollo metodológico y validación empírica de una escala para clasificar las marcas de productos tecnológicos en base a las dos dimensiones que caracterizan a las marcas Lovemark: el respecto y amor.

Con una base de datos recogidos de una muestra de 1.106 consumidores de productos tecnológicos (e.g., tablets y portátiles pequeños) en Grecia, se usa PLS para testar la validez del modelo jerárquico propuesto.

Los resultados ponen de manifiesto que el concepto Lovemark puede ser conceptualizado como un constructo reflectivo de tres dimensiones siendo el respeto y el amor hacia la marca las dimensiones de segundo orden. A su vez, el respeto hacia la marca refleja el desempeño, la confianza y reputación de la marca mientras que el amor queda reflejado en conceptos tales como el compromiso, la intimidad y la pasión. La medida propuesta presenta una aceptable validez externa pues es capaz de explicar mayor porcentaje de la varianza de las intenciones de compra, la comunicación boca-oreja positiva y la disposición a pagar un mayor precio por la marca. Finalmente, se demuestra la utilidad de la medida propuesta para clasificar ocho marcas conocidas según los niveles de amor y respeto que los consumidores manifiestan hacia las mismas así como identificar los estilos de amor asociados a la relación que los consumidores mantienen con estas marcas.

Este trabajo ofrece evidencias empíricas para medir e identificar las Lovemark usando un modelo jeráquico que puede ser utilizado posteriormente para desarrollar una estrategia más efectiva en la gestión de los aspectos funcionales y emocionales de las marcas como medio para fortalecer las relaciones marca-consumidor.