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There is currently a great deal of attention in psychometric and statistical methods on ensuring measurement invariance when examining measures across time or populations. When measurement invariance is established, changes in scores over time or across groups can be attributed to changes in the construct rather than changes in reaction to or interpretation of the measurement instrument. When measurement in not invariant, it is possible that measured differences are due to the measurement instrument itself and not to the underlying phenomenon of interest. This chapter discusses the importance of establishing measurement invariance specifically in postsecondary settings, where it is anticipated that individuals' perspectives will change over time as a function of their higher education experiences. Using examples from several measures commonly used in higher education research, the concepts and processes underlying tests of measurement invariance are explained and analyses are interpreted using data from a US-based longitudinal study on bioscience PhD students. These measures include sense of belonging over time and across groups, mental well-being over time, and perceived mentorship quality over time. The chapter ends with a discussion about the implications of longitudinal and group measurement invariance as an important conceptual property for moving forward equitable, reproducible, and generalizable quantitative research in higher education. Invariance methods may further be relevant for addressing criticisms about quantitative analyses being biased toward majority populations that have been discussed by critical theorists engaging quantitative research strategies.

Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.

Although the measurement of organizational readiness for change has been encouraged, measuring readiness for change poses a major empirical challenge. This is not because instruments designed to do this are not available. Researchers, consultants, and practitioners have published an array of instruments, suggesting that readiness can be measured from various perspectives and the concept of readiness has not been clearly defined. This paper reviews the history of the readiness concept, the perspectives used to assess readiness, and the psychometric properties of readiness instruments. Based on the review, an integrated definition of readiness is presented along with the implications of the definition for research and practice.

As the literature reveals an ongoing debate on the lack of agreement for a comprehensive conceptualization and definition of destructive leadership, the measurement of the construct is still problematic. Therefore, this chapter aims to review and summarize the current ways of measuring destructive leadership. A systematic review was conducted to examine the destructive leadership instruments. This chapter covers both qualitative and quantitative instruments in assessing destructive leadership and provides a brief overview of the scale development of the instruments. In addition to destructive leadership scales, commonly used harmful leadership scales such as abusive, tyrannical and toxic scales were also included for comparison purposes.

Through a number of comprehensive reviews, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has recommended that healthcare organizations develop safety cultures to align delivery system processes with the workforce requirements to improve patient outcomes. Until health systems can provide safer care environments, patients remain at risk for suboptimal care and adverse outcomes. Health science researchers have begun to explore how safety cultures might act as an essential system feature to improve organizational outcomes. Since safety cultures are established through modification in employee safety perspective and work behavior, human resource (HR) professionals need to contribute to this developing organizational domain. The IOM indicates individual employee behaviors cumulatively provide the primary antecedent for organizational safety and quality outcomes. Yet, many safety culture scholars indicate the concept is neither theoretically defined nor consistently applied and researched as the terms safety culture, safety climate, and safety attitude are interchangeably used to represent the same concept. As such, this paper examines the intersection of organizational culture and healthcare safety by analyzing the theoretical underpinnings of safety culture, exploring the constructs for measurement, and assessing the current state of safety culture research. Safety culture draws from the theoretical perspectives of sociology (represented by normal accident theory), organizational psychology (represented by high reliability theory), and human factors (represented by the aviation framework). By understanding not only the origins but also the empirical safety culture research and the associated intervention initiatives, healthcare professionals can design appropriate HR strategies to address the system characteristics that adversely affect patient outcomes. Increased emphasis on human resource management research is particularly important to the development of safety cultures. This paper contributes to the existing healthcare literature by providing the first comprehensive critical analysis of the theory, research, and practice that comprise contemporary safety culture science.

The widespread adoption of the Balanced Scorecard has led to a need to understand how performance measures affect employees’ attitudes and behaviors. Despite the growing trend in the implementation of the Balanced Scorecard, there is little research evidence available on the behavioral outcomes resulting from the use of nonfinancial performance measures. This study seeks to address this gap by examining several behavioral outcomes, including job satisfaction, organizational commitment and managerial performance, resulting from the use of financial and nonfinancial performance measures.

Data were collected using a mailed questionnaire survey to manufacturing organizations in Singapore. Path analysis technique was employed in this study to investigate the relationships.

The results of the study show that behavioral outcomes are indifferent regardless of the nature and type of performance measures used. However, the relationships between performance measures and behavioral outcomes are indirect through procedural fairness and trust in supervisor.

Survey questionnaire method was used in this study and there are limitations associated with survey questionnaire method. As our sample was selected from large organizations, it is unclear if our results are generalizable to small organizations. Also, as our sample was selected from the manufacturing sector, generalizing our results to the nonmanufacturing sectors should be made with caution.

This study highlights the need for organizations to pay attention to issues pertaining to procedural fairness and interpersonal trust in the design and implementation of performance measurement systems.

Although ambivalence is a common experience in family relations, the conceptualization of these relations has been focused on solidarity, closeness, and attraction on one hand, and on stress, distance, disruption, and abuse on the other. Ambivalence has not often been considered systematically for the analysis of intergenerational relations. Measurement instruments are not widely available for this purpose, because they tend to focus on one dimension at a time (Berscheid, 1983, pp. 115–116).