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Storytelling is considered an effective leadership behavior. However, research on storytelling’s effects on followers is scarce and disconnected from leadership theory. This paper aims to explore the perspectives of both leaders and followers with a focus on interaction-based moderators and affective mediators of storytelling effects, building on transformational leadership and leader-member exchange theory.

Data from semi-structured interviews (N = 27 independent leaders and followers) were analyzed with a combined content-analytic and grounded theory approach.

Leaders’ intended effects of storytelling (transformation, relationship and information) evoked either positive or negative affective reactions in followers depending on how well the story met followers’ needs (need-supply fit), the adequacy of the input load transported by the story (story load) and how followers interpreted their leaders’ story (story appraisal). Followers’ positive or negative affective reactions translated into positive effects (corresponding to leaders’ intended effects) or negative effects (contradicting leaders’ intended effects), respectively. Results were integrated into an intention-perception model of storytelling.

Proposing an intention-perception model of storytelling, this paper explains when and why unintended effects of storytelling happen, and thus provides an alternative view to the one-fits-all approach on leaders’ storytelling advocated by popular management literature.

Defying conventional wisdom, leaders' storytelling may have ambiguous and even negative effects on followers. Built upon transformational leadership and leader -member exchange theory, the intention-perception model of storytelling in leadership provides a framework to systematically explain when and why unintended effects of storytelling happen. Despite its theoretical and practical relevance, a quantitative evaluation of the model's main assumptions, and particularly of followers' perceptions of leader storytelling, is still pending.

The authors developed a scale to assess followers' story perceptions in study 1 (N = 79) and confirmed the scale's structure in study 2, an online cross-sectional field study (N = 60). In study 2, the authors also tested a main assumption of the intention-perception model of storytelling, that is, the relationship between followers' story perceptions and story effects, mediated via followers' affective arousal.

Data revealed that story effects indeed depend on followers' perception of the story. In particular, the better a leader's story met followers' needs (need-supply fit), the more adequate the input load transported by the story (story load), the more positive followers' appraisal of their leader's story (story appraisal) and the more positive affective reactions and positive effects of storytelling (transformation, leader -member exchange quality, and trust in the leader) followers perceived.

The authors provide practical insights into how leaders may improve their storytelling by tailoring their stories to the expectations and needs of their followers.

Taking a follower-centric perspective on a common leadership practice (i.e. storytelling), the present research provides first support for the intention-perception model of storytelling in leadership.

This paper's purpose centres on advancing the current financialisation strategies within digital transformation (DT) through a rebalanced synthesis of both financialisation and people/centric, non-financialisation strategies of the DT field. Based on empirical data from Bahrain's energy sector, a new framework on People-centric, Sustaining Network Leadership is developed, capturing DT's human values deficit and proposing a new model on financialisation and non-financialisation strategies showing ‘how’ and ‘why’ DT is implemented in contemporary organisations.

This study conducted a mixed methodology of narrative interviews, case studies and reviewed significant contributions from the DT, leadership and change management debates. A total of 26 operational and high-level leaders from Bahrain, 8 top energy companies and Braun and Clarke's 6-phase analysis were combined to form four empirical thematic bundles on ‘how’ and ‘why’ leaders adopted financialisation and non-financialisation strategies to resolve organisational sustainability issues in an Arabic context.

Four sets of findings (bundles 1–4) highlight participants' financial and structural understanding when implementing DT initiatives, the different leadership styles ranging from authoritarian to network leadership, the socio-economic, political and cultural ramifications of their practices and the urgency of staff reskilling for organisational resilience and strategic sustainability. Based on the eight energy cases and interviews, a new values-driven, People-centric Sustaining Network Leadership Model is developed to show a more effective and efficient use of financial and non-financial resources when organisations implement DT initiatives in efforts to resolve global energy sustainability problems.

Leadership, change management, DT, energy and environmental sustainability is a huge area of scholarship. While new studies emerge and contribute to this growing body of knowledge, this investigation has focused on those that significantly highlight how to make effective use of financialisation and non-financialisation resources. Therefore, all the literature on the topic has not been included. Although this study has filled the non-financialisation gap in current DT studies, a further rebalancing of the financialisation versus non-financialisation debates will be needed for theoreticians, practitioners and policy makers to continue addressing emerging and more complex socio-economic, political and cultural issues within and beyond organisations. Limitations are the study's focus on the Bahrain energy sector and the limited sample of 26 leaders.

The study provides practitioners and policy makers with an approach for the successful implementation of DT initiatives in the oil and gas sector. For academics, this study provides empirically unique and interesting thematic bundles, insightful analyses into leadership, organisational change, digital transformation and network leadership theories to develop an innovative and creative People-centric, Sustaining Network Leadership Approach/Model on the practical barriers, implications/impacts of various leadership styles and potential solutions via a socio-cultural values-based alternative to the current financialisation discourse of DT.

While there is a growing body of literature on DT, Leadership and Organisational Transformation and Change, there is a dearth of scholarship on the human-orientated strategies of DT implementation outside of western contexts. A contemporary and comprehensive, empirically evidenced analysis of the field has led to the development of this study's People-centric, Sustaining Network Leadership model which frames, captures, synthesises and extends the dominant cost-minimisation rhetoric of DT discourse to include a shared set of leadership practices, behaviours, intentions, perceptions and values. This helped to reveal the previously missing ‘how’ and ‘why’ of DT’s operational and strategic implementation.

The purpose of this article is to present a systematic review of scientific production on career stages in the last decade (2011–2020). More specifically, it seeks to understand the methodological approaches, how career stages have been operationalized in research in the Management field, and the main results of these researches.

The authors searched articles about career stages on the Web of Science database published between 2011 and 2020. The final portfolio for the systematic review included 20 article based on pre-established criteria for the selection.

The results present an overview of these articles, as well as the methodological approaches used. The authors confirmed that there is no consensus on the operationalization of the career stage. Five topics associated with career stages were discussed: workers' attitudes and behaviors; training and mentoring; intentions; perception of success and work-life balance; and work values.

The authors found no other studies concerning the review of scientific production on career stages and divergences in the operationalization of the theme. However, considering the large number of research studies that deal with careers and their stages, it is relevant to discuss how the career stages can be operationalized and whether their operationalization is valid.

This paper aims to examine Korean jewelry manufacturers operating in China to assess the relationship between their perceptions of external risks and their intentions to relocate. The authors hypothesize that foreign firms finding risk in the current external environment are more likely to consider moving their facilities outside China. In particular, this paper explores whether firm performance and technological capability moderate the relationship between perceived external risk and relocation intentions.

Korean jewelry manufacturers were among the first Korean firms entering China in the early 1990s to avoid Korea’s rising labor costs. After 20 years, they face similar external risks in China. The authors collected and analyzed 238 survey samples from Korean jewelry manufacturers operating in China to determine whether perceived external risks affect decisions to relocate. Logistic regression was used to examine the hypotheses. In addition to an empirical method, five case studies related to empirical results have been included.

Analysis results suggest that firms perceiving riskier managerial and competitive environments are more likely to have relocation intentions. Perceptions of risks from the governmental/political environment and macroeconomic environment have no significant relationship with relocation intentions. Also, firms’ performance and technological capability negatively moderate the relationship between perceptions of managerial competitive environment risks and relocation intentions.

This study contributes to the literature on international business relocation strategies by examining perceptions of external risks that determine whether foreign manufacturing firms will relocate. In addition, the research sheds light on the transformation of Chinese economics from labor-intensive to capital-, technological- and knowledge-intensive structures. By applying multi-methods, this research further elaborates empirical results with five case studies.

To encourage sustainable consumer practices, public policy makers introduce new ecological measures, including mandatory programmes that require companies to provide environmental information about their products, even if the information is not flattering. Few academic studies consider the potential impacts of such mandatory eco-labels on consumer behaviour; the purpose of this paper is to seek to identify conditions in which a generalized eco-label in stores might modify consumers’ purchase choices.

Two quasi-experimental studies (n=333, 126) manipulate environmental information with a simple, traffic light – shaped eco-label. The measures focus on respondents’ choice or purchasing intentions, perceptions of the environmental harmfulness of each product, and individual characteristics (i.e. environmental concern, price sensitivity, familiarity with environmental information about the product category).

The presence of an eco-label influences consumers’ beliefs about products’ environmental harm and thus choice. The effect of perceived harmfulness on choice is moderated by environmental concern and price sensitivity, though combined effects arise for only one of the two product categories tested (dish soap, not yoghurt). With a third product category (paper towels), Study 2 confirms the influence of familiarity with environmental information.

Familiarity with environmental information accounts for some differences across product categories, but other factors also come into play. These results must be interpreted carefully due to the use of a fictive eco-label.

This paper examines the potential effects of a generalized, mandatory programme. It also addresses the lack of consistent label effectiveness across product categories, with a possible explanation based on perceived familiarity with environmental information.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the topic of multi-channel retailing. Specifically, the research intends to determine if and to what extent the opening of physical stores by a former web-only retailer reduces or extends overall retail sales, and whether such effects tend to change over time. Empirical analysis focuses on data elaboration from a retailer who has passed from the initial mono-channel model (pure online), to a multi-channel one with the opening of stores.

Through the analysis of an internal data set of a leading consumer electronics retailer applying Probit and Logit estimation techniques, the authors extract information about actual customers’ purchases (or rather retail sales) in three newly opened stores and about online purchases (through an e-commerce web site managed by the same retailer with the same store brand) by people living in the new store service areas before and after the openings.

The paper shows that, for the single customer, the probability of purchasing online is reduced by the store opening in the short term, but tends to increase in the long term. Besides, results indicate that long-term synergy between the two channels depends mainly on indirect influence due to the mere presence of the store brand in the area rather than on the direct experience of shopping in the store.

The study highlights that channel portfolio enlargement from mono- to multi-channel retailing tends to activate a sort of life cycle; while in the early phase of store addition web sales tend to be cannibalized because the two channels are perceived as “substitutes” for each other, in the long run migration turns into a synergy effect; different channels tend to interact with and reinforce each other as customer touch points of the same retailer, in an omni-channel perspective.

The paper herein presents various original elements concerning types of available data (actual sales rather than consumers’ intentions/perceptions and individual level data rather than aggregate level ones), estimation technique used (binary choice model) and research hypotheses (distinguishing between “direct” and “indirect” synergy effects in multi-channel retailing).

This study aims to examine investors' reactions to bad financial news (IRBFN) based on complex financial accounting disclosures (CFAD) as well as how investors' herding behavior influences investor reactions in United Arab Emirates (UAE) project-based organizations (PBOs).

The primary data collection was furnished via online questionnaires, and 310 completed questionnaires were analyzed using structural equation modelling (SEM), moderation analysis, multiple regression simulations and path analysis.

The study shows that four out of the five CFAD dimensions observed – investors’ relations (IR), board and management structure, transparency disclosure and other disclosure channels – have a direct influence on investor's reactions to bad financial news, with the exception of “external auditing and audit service”. In addition, investor herding has a moderation impact on the relationship between CFAD and IRBFN.

There is a possibility that the broad view of the results may be limited by the size of the research sample. The paper's findings should therefore be authenticated at an intercontinental level with the same conceptual framework in other nations.

The purpose of modeling stakeholders' decision-making process is to improve their decisions and to control their reactions that may negatively affect PBOs in the UAE.

This research contributes to planned behavior theory and agency theory in the UAE context, both of which are empirically tested.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and explain what happens in practice in TM, in order to contribute to the building of a broader and more balanced theoretical framework for TM in which the impact of the organizational context and its interrelated actors are taken into account.

The empirical data were collected in an explorative, longitudinal study on TM policies and practices in five Dutch university departments.

The two crucial actors in TM – the organization and the talented employee – have a different perception of the intended and actual value of TM. The organization is capable of shaping and implementing a TM system that meets its needs, so from an organizational perspective TM is effective. Since the needs of the talented employees are insufficiently addressed in the intended and actual TM practices, TM has less value for them. Various influence factors at the institutional, organizational and individual level are identified.

The study was a first step in opening the “black box” in TM, but several questions on the TM process still remain unanswered. The author therefore encourages more research on the multiple levels in the TM process, and the factors that cause variability.

Knowledge of the factors which influence the TM process from strategy to outcomes can help practitioners to build a more effective TM approach.

Theoretical approaches from companion academic disciplines are linked to the dominant viewpoints in the TM literature. Moreover, to give counterbalance to the tendency to use universal models to explain TM, this study contextualizes TM. Finally, this study goes beyond a focus on management interests, and investigates to what extent other stakeholders (employees) benefit from TM.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how potential purchasers of a personal information, communication and entertainment device such as a smartphone, perceive the aesthetics of such a product. It then examines whether appreciation of the product’s aesthetics influences their purchase intention through different dimensions of perceived value drawn from perceptions of the product’s aesthetics, or whether there is a direct relationship from aesthetics to purchase intention.

Mixed methods consisting of two focus groups, a pilot and large online surveys were used for instrument confirmation and data collection. Data were analysed and hypotheses were tested using partial least squares structural equation modelling techniques.

Aesthetics’ primary effect on purchase intention is not direct, but rather indirect through perceived social and to a lesser extent, perceived emotional value while the importance of aesthetics on perceived functional value is far less. There was also support for a formative approach in the construction of an aesthetics scale with the identification of four different latent factors of aesthetics.

This study is product specific but should be extendable to the product category. The possibility of other variables affecting the aesthetic appreciation of a product also needs consideration.

The study provides managers with insights on how aesthetics can be used to strengthen purchase intention in terms of both product development and promotional strategies. Aesthetics’ appeal to social and emotional perceived values, rather than functional value, provides guidance on how to use aesthetics in promotional campaigns.

Despite the richness of the literature on aesthetics, only a limited number of studies have researched the factors influencing aesthetic appreciation of a product and the effect on purchase intention. This research expands knowledge in the area thereby providing new insights on the influence of aesthetics on marketing.