Search results

This study examined the influence of mediator insight on disputants' perceptions and behaviors in negotiation. Participants played the role of student employee representatives and bargained with student management representatives over a number of issues. During the course of the negotiation, a mediator made recommendations as to how the conflict should be resolved. The experiment varied (1) the amount of information disputants believed mediators possessed about their interests and needs and (2) mediator recommendations (e.g., integrative, compromise, non/ integrative). The results indicated that perceived insight (i.e., the level of information about the conflict) had strong effects on disputants' perceptions of mediator credibility. Perceptions of mediator credibility, in turn, were found to influence disputants' general perceptions of the mediator (e.g., acceptability, confidence, satisfaction) and perceptions of the mediator's recommendations.

Mediating effects allow strategic management researchers to understand “black box” processes underlying complex relationships whereby the effect of an independent variable is transmitted to a dependent variable through a third variable. Since the seminal work of Baron and Kenny (1986), advancements have been made in mediation analysis. Thus, literature on the latest techniques for analyzing mediating and intervening varibales is presented. In addition, strategy literature published in the Academy of Management Journal and the Strategic Management Journal between 1986 and 2005 employing tests of mediation is reviewed to better understand how mediation techniques are used by strategy scholars. Finally, implications and limitations of current mediation analysis in strategy research are discussed, and recommendations are provided to strategy scholars examining mediation.

This paper aims to examine the antecedent factor, top management's commitment to environmental sustainability, for the adoption of a sophisticated internal environmental information system; measured by the broad‐scope, timeliness, aggregation and integration of such information. The paper also seeks to examine whether the availability of such a system would lead to improved environmental performance.

The paper investigates responses from a survey of Chief Financial Officers or chief management accountants in the top 200 listed companies in Australia. It uses linear regression analysis based on a multiple‐mediator model with percentile‐based bootstrap, bias‐corrected (BC) and bias‐corrected and accelerated (BCa) bootstrap confidence intervals to identify significant mediators.

It was found in this study that top management commitment to environmental sustainability was associated with the adoption of a sophisticated internal environmental information system. Further, the availability of aggregated environmental information was found to mediate the relationship between top management commitment to environmental sustainability and environmental performance. However, there was no significant relationship to other mediating variables.

Limitations relate to the collinearity of mediators which make it difficult to identify the impact of specific mediators in a multi‐mediator model. The implications are that other methods may provide further value, but these may need to be based on either different data or larger samples.

The findings point to the importance of aggregated environmental accounting information to organisations aiming to improve their environmental performance.

The study contributes to the corporate environmental accounting literature by empirically linking the top management commitment to environmental sustainability and to environmental performance through the adoption of accounting information provisions. The results of this study also provide guidance to practitioners about how to ensure their commitment to environmental sustainability will be translated to environmental performance and to some extent provide some answer to whether countries such as Australia should implement Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) to account for carbon costs.

Indirect or mediated effects constitute a type of relationship between constructs that often occurs in partial least squares (PLS) path modeling. Over the past few years, the methods for testing mediation have become more sophisticated. However, many researchers continue to use outdated methods to test mediating effects in PLS, which can lead to erroneous results. One reason for the use of outdated methods or even the lack of their use altogether is that no systematic tutorials on PLS exist that draw on the newest statistical findings. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study illustrates the state-of-the-art use of mediation analysis in the context of PLS-structural equation modeling (SEM).

This study facilitates the adoption of modern procedures in PLS-SEM by challenging the conventional approach to mediation analysis and providing more accurate alternatives. In addition, the authors propose a decision tree and classification of mediation effects.

The recommended approach offers a wide range of testing options (e.g. multiple mediators) that go beyond simple mediation analysis alternatives, helping researchers discuss their studies in a more accurate way.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the link between transformational leadership and depressive symptoms among employees is mediated by such personal resources as occupational self-efficacy, perceived meaningfulness of the work, and work-related rumination.

The study was conducted using questionnaires among 557 Finnish municipal employees in various occupations. The statistical analysis was based on structural equation modeling. A multiple mediation model enabled us to investigate the specific indirect effects of each mediator. Model comparison was applied to ascertain whether the mediation should be considered as full or partial.

Results based on model comparison showed that the proposed factors fully mediated the negative relationship between transformational leadership and depressive symptoms. Thus high level of transformational leadership was associated with high levels of occupational self-efficacy and perceived meaningfulness of the work, and low level of work-related rumination during off-job time, which, in turn, were associated with low level of depressive symptoms. The fully mediated model explained 36 percent of the variance in depressive symptoms. All of the three mediators made a unique contribution to this relationship.

The results imply that transformational leadership behaviors may decrease depressiveness among employees through strengthening the personal resources of employees. However, as the study is cross-sectional, causal relationships can only be hypothesized.

The study sheds new light on the possible processes through which transformational leaders may exert their health-promoting effects on employees even in terms of depressive symptoms.

This study compares the impact of three drivers of sustainability behavior (perceived quality, social influences, and online education) and three transformative mediators (price value, attitude, and environmental knowledge) in influencing green buying behavior in a developed versus a developing country.

Data was collected through a self-administered online survey in the United States (n = 195) and in Brazil (n = 209). The hypothesized model was tested using structural equation modeling software. Multi-group analysis was conducted to compare the impact of drivers and mediators on consumers' intention and willingness to buy green products and services between the two country groups.

The direct effects of price value, attitude, online education, and environmental knowledge, together with the indirect effects of perceived quality, social influence, and online education explain a significant amount of variation in driving consumer sustainability behavior in both countries. Differences between countries indicate that cultural and country's level of economic development moderate some relationships in the model. Affordable prices and social influences are stronger in Brazil.

Organizations must educate consumers on relevant socio-ecological issues and communicate the positive aspects of their sustainable offerings as a proactive way to change consumers' attitude toward sustainability behavior, while recognizing the influence of family and friends in collectivist societies and price value in emerging markets.

This study is unique in drawing from three theories of green buying behavior and for empirically demonstrating the importance of distinct drivers and mediators under the context of countries in different stages of economic development (developed and developing). It provides a more global perspective on the topic and highlights the influential power of the key transformative mediators in the model.

This paper aims to determine whether prosocial motivation acts as a mediator between the individual motivation types of self-determination theory and knowledge sharing.

A partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM) based on data collection (N = 303) ) was calculated, using “Smart PLS 3” software.

In respect of the influence of individual motivation types on knowledge sharing, it was found that prosocial motivation provides indirect mediation for external motivation and complementary mediation for introjected motivation, whereas it has no mediation effect on intrinsic and identified motivation.

Future research should consider the use of prosocial motivation as a mediator to reveal indirect effects that, otherwise, are at risk of remaining hidden.

To foster knowledge sharing within organizations, measures should be taken to increase external, introjected and prosocial motivation, as it was found that these types of motivation have a significant positive impact on knowledge sharing.

The current unanswered question – whether or not prosocial motivation acts as a mediator between the motivation types of self-determination theory and knowledge sharing – is examined, thereby providing insights into the hitherto largely unexplored role of prosocial motivation in knowledge-sharing models.

The effect of different formats of message delivery has received little theoretical and empirical examination. This research focuses on the effect of written relational communication formats used by service providers. This study aims to answer three questions: Do different formats of written communications (i.e. handwriting and print) influence customer perceptions (i.e. feelings of warmth) of service firms? What are the mediators of these influences (i.e. perceived effort and psychological closeness)? And under what conditions do they occur (i.e. what is the contextual factor)?

One field study and three laboratory studies were conducted to provide a comprehensive understanding of the role of format in written communication.

Handwritten messages are more effective than print messages in building relationships in a service context because they elicit stronger feelings of warmth because of both the perception of greater effort and feelings of greater psychological closeness to the service provider. However, the presence of handwriting fails to deliver feelings of warmth when the quality of core services is low.

Service providers can effectively use handwritten communication to signal effort and create psychological closeness for relationship building with their key customers only when the quality of core services meets customer expectations.

First, the research differentiates the formats of written relational communication (handwritten vs print), and links communication formats with feelings of warmth, which is an important factor for impression and relationship formation in the practice of services marketing. Second, based on cognitive-experiential self-theory, this research demonstrates the dual mediators underlying the effect of handwriting (vs print) on warmth: perceived effort and psychological closeness. Third, it identifies the quality of core service as a boundary condition for the effect of handwritten communication.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of social identity and the psychological contract as plausible frameworks of transformational leadership (TL)-attitudes relationship.

A cross-sectional study was conducted amongst 134 employees. All variables were measured using self-report measures and multiple mediator analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

Both social identity and psychological contract acted as significant mediators between leadership and attitudinal outcomes. However, social identity emerged as the stronger mediator.

This study provides evidence on the relative significance of social identity over the psychological contract in explaining TL-attitudes relationship at work. Further longitudinal work is warranted.

The results suggest providing internal work environments and practices which enable employees to experience a high degree of fairness and, above all, a sense of identity with the organization can link better their perceptions of their leaders with work attitudes.

This study contributes to the literature by highlighting the importance of TL not only on work attitudes but also on the value of important mediators like social identity and the psychological contract as feeding into this relationship. It therefore promotes and raises awareness of the need to explore the explanatory power of these two mediators in understanding the effects of leadership on followers.

This study examines the impact of mediator style, mediation outcome, and mediator background variables on community mediation participant satisfaction and fairness perceptions along several dimensions. Our data were collected from a community mediation program located in a justice court in the Southwestern United States. During a twelve‐month period, 40 mediation sessions, each involving a single mediator, were videotaped. The 108 mediation participants completed surveys assessing their perceptions of and satisfaction with their specific mediation experiences. The findings indicate important impacts of mediator facilitativeness on all perceptions and of conflict resolution success on satisfaction. Mediator experience impacted perceptions of the mediator; mediator gender and law background had no impacts.