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The purpose of this paper is to use social exchange theory (SET) to examine a model where supportive and unsupportive manager behaviors (SMB and UMB) interact to predict employees’ engagement, job satisfaction and turnover intention.

A cross-sectional online survey collected data from 252 UK-based employees of a global data management company.

Factor analysis confirmed manager behaviors to consist of two constructs: supportive and unsupportive behaviors. Structural equation modeling indicated SMB predicted job satisfaction and turnover intentions, but not engagement. Job satisfaction, but not engagement, mediated the SMB-turnover intention relationship. UMB only predicted job dissatisfaction. Neither job satisfaction nor engagement mediated the UMB-turnover intention relationship. UMB undermined the positive relationship between SMB and turnover intention.

The behaviors assessed can be integrated into various stages of a manager’s development process to serve as guidelines of good practice. Crucially, findings suggest managers can exhibit both supportive and unsupportive behaviors, and that consistency in behaviors is important. The study also provides evidence that supportive managers can help reduce turnover intention through job satisfaction.

SET was used as a framework for SMB, UMB and engagement. To the authors’ knowledge this is the first study to examine the interaction between SMB and UMB.

Workers and construction professionals are generally not proficient in recognizing and managing safety hazards. Although valuable, traditional training experiences have not sufficiently addressed the issue of poor hazard recognition and management in construction. Since hazard recognition and management are cognitive skills that depend on attention, visual examination and decision-making, performance assessment and feedback in an environment that is realistic and representative of actual working conditions are important. The purpose of this paper is to propose a personalized safety training protocol that is delivered using robust, realistic and immersive environments.

Two types of virtual environments were developed: (1) Stereo-panoramic environments using real construction scenes that were used to evaluate the performance of trainees accurately and (2) A virtual construction site, which was used to deliver various elements of instructional training. A training protocol was then designed that was aimed at improving the hazard recognition and management performance of trainees. It was delivered using the developed virtual environments. The effectiveness of the training protocol was experimentally tested with 53 participants using a before–after study.

The results present a 39% improvement in hazard recognition and a 44% improvement in hazard management performance.

This study combines the benefits of using a virtual environment for providing instructional training along with realistic environments (stereo-panoramic scenes) for performance assessment and feedback. The training protocol includes several new and innovative training elements that are designed to improve the hazard recognition and hazard management abilities of the trainees. Moreover, the effectiveness of training in improving hazard recognition and hazard management is measured using specific outcome variables.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute a multilevel, cross-national analysis of the role that sociocultural context may play to enrich the understanding of strategic renewal in family firms. The authors conceptualize sociocultural context as consisting of firm-level social contexts and national culture, and propose that: heterogeneous social contexts in family firm management, i.e. family CEO and multigenerational involvement, give rise to mindsets that have differential effects on renewal efforts and that the proposed effects are subject to variation due to the moderation of national cultural dimensions of uncertainty avoidance and power distance.

The authors use unique date set consisting of 959 family firms from 26 countries drawn from a cross-national, quantitative study of family firms.

The authors found that family CEO is negatively related to renewal across cultures, and this relationship is attenuated by uncertainty avoidance and power distance. In addition, multigenerational involvement is positively related to renewal, and this relationship is enhanced by the two cultural dimensions.

The authors suggest that decision makers examine how different contexts, practices and cognition contribute to overall dominant logics that exist in firm. In doing so, they can evaluate how logics as a whole affect renewal, and also how different parts of the logics play a role. This overall evaluation will afford managers a holistic picture of renewal forces that operate in family firm and allow managers to make precise changes to enhance strategic renewal.

The findings support the contention that there is cultural-dependent countervailing effects on strategic renewal within family firms.

Although scholars have considered the success factors of process improvement (PI) projects, limited research has considered the factors that influence failure. The purpose of this paper is to extend the understanding of PI project failure by systematically reviewing the research on generic project failure, and developing research propositions and future research directions specifically for PI projects.

A systematic literature review protocol resulted in a total of 97 research papers that are reviewed for contributions on project failure.

An inductive category formation process resulted in three categories of findings. The first category are the causes for project failure, the second category is about relatedness between failure factors and the third category is on failure mitigation strategies. For each category, propositions for future research on PI projects specifically are developed. Additional future research directions proposed lay in better understanding PI project failure as it unfolds (i.e. process studies vs cross-sectional), understanding PI project failure from a theoretical perspective and better understanding of PI project failure antecedents.

This paper takes a multi-disciplinary and project type approach, synthesizes the existing knowledge and reflects upon the developments in the field of research. Propositions and a framework for future research on PI project failure are presented.

Using risk-related data often require a significant amount of upfront work to collect, extract and transform data. In addition, the lack of a consistent data structure hinders the development of tools that can be used with more than one set of data. The purpose of this paper is to report on an effort to solve these problems through the development of extensible, internally consistent schemas for risk-related data.

The consortia coordinated their efforts so the hazard, exposure and vulnerability schemas are compatible. Hazard data can be provided as either event footprints or stochastic catalogs. Exposure classes include buildings, infrastructure, agriculture, livestock, forestry and socio-economic data. The vulnerability component includes fragility and vulnerability functions and indicators for physical and social vulnerability. The schemas also provide the ability to define uncertainties and allow the scoring of vulnerability data for relevance and quality.

As a proof of concept, the schemas were populated with data for Tanzania and with exposure data for several other countries.

The data schema and data exploration tool are open source and, if widely accepted, could become widely used by practitioners.

A single set of hazard, exposure and vulnerability schemas will not fit all purposes. Tools will be needed to transform the data into other formats.

This paper describes extensible, internally consistent, multi-hazard, exposure and vulnerability schemas that can be used to store disaster risk-related data and a data exploration tool that promotes data discovery and use.

This study aims to examine the complex effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on China’s agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) from 2005 to 2020. It also explores the role of absorptive capacity as a moderating factor during this period.

Employing provincial panel data from China, this research measures agricultural TFP using the Stochastic Frontier Approach (SFA)-Malmquist method. The impact of FDI on agricultural productivity is further analyzed using a nondynamic panel threshold model.

The results highlight technological progress as the main driver of agricultural TFP growth in China. Agricultural FDI (AFDI) seems to impede TFP development, whereas nonagricultural FDI (NAFDI) shows a distinct positive spillover effect. The study reveals a threshold in absorptive capacity that affects both the direct and spillover impacts of FDI. Provinces with higher absorptive capacity are less negatively impacted by AFDI and more likely to benefit from FDI spillovers (FDISs).

This study provides new insights into the intricate relationship between FDI, absorptive capacity and agricultural productivity. It underscores the importance of optimizing technological progress and research and development (R&D) to enhance agricultural productivity in China.

This study aimed to understand better what makes esports fans engage with streamers' live-streaming of esports gameplay. This study used the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and additionally adopted streamer identification and esports game identification as moderating variables.

Data were collected from streamers' esports content streaming viewers over 18 years of age using an online survey in Amazon M-Turk (N = 307). Based on past esports live-streaming weekly watching hours, which range from 1 to 45 h, the participants were divided into lower (n = 152) and higher (n = 155) frequency groups. PLS-SEM and bootstrapping techniques were used to test the moderated mediation relationships among the constructs.

This study found a negative moderating effect of past watching experience on the relationship between attitudes and behavioral intention, and it positively moderated the path between perceived behavioral control and behavioral intention. Also, it was found statistically significant direct impacts of streamer identification (STI) and esports game identification (EGI) on attitude and subjective norms. While the indirect impact of STI on behavioral intention through attitude was statistically significant, there were no significant indirect impacts of EGI on attitude and behavioral intention through subjective norms.

Theoretically, this study extends the TPB model by exploring the two identifications (i.e. streamers and esports games) as antecedents of the focal TPB factors (i.e. attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control) and the moderating effect of prior experience based on high/low weekly watching frequencies. Practically, content creators of esports live-streaming and live-streaming platform managers can use the study’s findings to develop strategies to nurture their current and future viewership.

US real estate investment trusts (REITs) typically distribute more dividends than required by tax regulations. This paper aims to focus on discretionary dividends, and examines the impact of information asymmetry on this excess component of dividends.

This paper considers a set of US REITs with reported taxable income figures over the 2000‐2007 period, and employs regression analysis to examine the influence of information asymmetry on the excess component of dividends. The explained variable is specified as excess dividends scaled by total assets. Excess dividends are dividends paid over the mandatory dividend payments calculated with taxable income, instead before‐tax net income. Following the REIT studies of Hardin and Hill and Han, this study employs Tobin Q as the proxy for asymmetric information.

Contrary to Hardin and Hill's conclusion, but consistent with dividend signaling theory as well as agency cost explanations, the results indicate that REITs with higher level of asymmetric information pay out significantly more excess dividends. Nevertheless, in contrast to Deshmukh's study on manufacturing firms, the REIT results are against the prediction of the pecking order theory.

The paper is one of the few studies that explicitly examine the factors influencing REIT decision on discretionary dividends. Contrast to previous studies, this study is able to obtain taxable income and compute the discretionary dividends more accurately. Furthermore this paper is able to provide evidence against the pecking order theory, which is not investigated in the existing REIT dividend studies.