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As the global presence of Chinese firms grows, increasing numbers of Chinese managers are working abroad as expatriates. However, little attention has been paid to such Chinese expatriate managers and their leadership challenges in an inter-cultural context, especially across a large cultural distance. To fill the gap in the literature concerning the leadership challenges for expatriate managers in an inter-cultural context, the purpose of this paper is to elucidate the leadership styles of Chinese expatriate managers from the perspectives of three traditional Chinese philosophies (i.e. Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism) in the inter-cultural context of the Netherlands.

The data for this qualitative study were collected via semi-structured, open-ended, narrative interviews with 30 Chinese expatriate managers in the Netherlands.

The results clearly show that the leadership style of Chinese expatriate managers is deeply rooted in the three traditional Chinese philosophies of Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism, even in an inter-cultural context. Specifically, the study reveals two salient aspects of how Chinese expatriate managers frame and interact with a foreign cultural context from the perspectives of traditional Chinese philosophies. First, the Chinese expatriate managers reported an initial cultural shock related to frictions between the foreign cultural context and Confucianism or Taoism, but less so in the case of Legalism. Second, the Chinese expatriate managers also reported that their interactions with the Dutch culture are best described as a balance between partial conflict and partial complementarity (thus, a duality). In this sense, the leadership style of Chinese expatriate managers is influenced jointly by the three traditional Chinese philosophies and certain elements of the foreign cultural context. This is consistent with the Chinese perspective of yin-yang balancing.

This study is among the first to offer a more nuanced and highly contextualized understanding of leadership in the unique case of expatriate managers from an emerging market (e.g. China) in an advanced economy (e.g. the Netherlands). The authors call for more research to apply the unique perspective of yin-yang balancing in an inter-cultural context. The authors posit that this approach represents the most salient implication of this study. For practical implications, the authors argue that expatriate leaders should carefully manage the interplay between their deep-rooted home-country philosophies and their salient host-country culture. Reflecting on traditional philosophies in another culture can facilitate inter-cultural leadership training for Chinese expatriates.

This study examines the relationship between fashion leadership, clothing deprivation and satisfaction of Hong Kong young consumers. A survey was carried out with 309 university students and 228 working young people in Hong Kong. Factor analysis with varimax rotation was used to group various attributes into different factors related to clothing deprivation and satisfaction. Hirschman and Adcock's (1978) measure was adopted to classify subjects into various fashion groups. ANOVA followed by Scheffe's procedure was applied to detect differences in clothing deprivation and satisfaction between different fashion groups. The implications of the findings to fashion retailers are discussed.

This paper examines whether guests contribute sWOM (social word of mouth) on different SNSs (social networking sites) regarding various personal motivations. SNSs have changed the way guests eat and experience their food and dishes. Marketing managers have effectively targeted SNSs as a marketing tool, yet have little research about drivers of guests' sWOM contribution on SNSs has been done. A model including the significant motives: (1) experiences, (2) opinion leadership, (3) reflection of self and (4) need for unique is tested to investigate their positive effects on contribution behavior of social media guests.

The data collected from 411 guests by using the snowball method was used for analysis. The structural equation modeling was applied to examine the relationships among the constructs and test the eight proposed hypotheses.

Results reveal that experiences, opinion leadership, reflection of self and need for unique were positively associated with contributing sWOM of restaurants. Furthermore, those who have positive experiences tend to be opinion leadership and reflection of self. And guests who show reflection of self, they are more likely to have opinion leaders and show need for uniqueness. Our study expands the existing frameworks of sWOM contribution by identifying various motivations and labeling sWOM. Findings provide restaurant managers with managerial implications for online marketing strategies on SNSs to attract sWOM contribution among guests.

It has some limitations while discovering the motivations of positive sWOM contribution. First, we only focused on the motivation of contributing positive sWOM, while negative sWOM received many arguments in changing attitudes toward buying products or services. Second, we collected data in Vietnam only without comparing with different countries. Future research could explore further cross-cultural perspectives to fill the gap. Third, this study explored sWOM contribution in service environment, sWOM contribution from service context may be slightly different from those of product brands.

These findings highlight the motivations of sWOM contribution that restaurant managers must recognize and make use of it. SNSs have given power to consumers to post everything at anytime and anywhere they like, therefore restaurant managers need to deeply understand why their consumers contribute sWOM. In digital era, customers and guests have become the ultimate tools for promoting product or service brands. The marketing managers should create an online platform in order to facilitate their consumers to discuss their brand frequently (Charu et al., 2018). Restaurants should have policies to push positive eWOM maximally and also reduce advertising costs.

This is one of the first studies on sWOM contribution of what motivate guests to contribute their sWOM on SNSs. Theoretically, this study offers deep insights into the links between various motivations and sWOM in foodservice context. Managerially, understanding these motivations allow marketing managers create effective policies that motivate guests to contribute positive word of mouth.

To provide research‐informed guidance to leaders of quality and safety improvement and evidence‐based materials for education programmes for leaders

Search of databases and hard copy literature since 1985 into managers' and leaders' role in quality and safety improvement. Classification into “eA”: Empirical research strong evidence, “eB”: Empirical research, weak evidence and, “eC”: Conceptual discussion, not based on systematic empirical research. Summary, and synthesis of the best available evidence for a guidance checklist for leaders.

Although most literature emphasises the importance of committed leadership for successful quality and safety improvement, research evidence supporting this is scarce and often scientifically limited. The research shows evidence of the limitations and scope of leader actions for improving health care provision, the need to engage clinicians in this work and ways to do so, as well as the leadership role played by others apart from senior leaders. The ability of managers and other leaders skilfully to tailor Q&SI to the situation may be important but descriptions of how leaders do this and evidence supporting this proposition are lacking.

More research is needed about whether or how the leader role is different according to the stage of quality and safety development of the organisation, the type of organisation, the type of context, the level and type of leader and the type of improvement and improvement method.

Implications for leaders' actions are provided in a “best evidence guidance” checklist. This provides more tangible and research‐informed guidance than the inspirational literature or studies from single organisations.

This paper provides the first overview and synthesis of a wide range of studies which can be used as a basis for future research and materials for educational programmes. It provides the first detailed guidance for leaders about specific actions which research suggests they need to take to improve quality and safety.

The purposes of the study were to classify South Korean female apparel shoppers into fashion opinion leadership groups and to develop group profdes by lifestyle characteristics, store selection attributes, clothing purchase influences, and sociodemographics. Data (N=271) were collected by questionnaires distributed to 300 South Korean consumers chosen to participate in the investigation. By cluster analysis of the Fashion Opinion Leadership (FOL) scale, four female consumer groups were identified as traditionoriented/culture conscious (29.4 per cent), eco‐nomic‐oriented/price conscious (15.8 per cent), convenience‐oriented/time conscious (28.7 per cent), and appearance‐oriented/fashion conscious (26.1 per cent). Scale reliability with the inter‐national sample was determined by a Cronbach alpha. Groups were compared on the profile descriptors through MANOVA and chisquare statistics. Results indicated that fashion opinion leadership is a base for segmenting South Korean female apparel shoppers. This study suggests ways knowledge about the consumer groups identified can be incorporated into marketing and retail strategies.

This article aims to examine political marketing strategies adopted by the politicians operating in base of the pyramid (BOP) areas and their impact on the BOP voters using the tenets of the social influence theory.

The authors resorted to a qualitative phenomenological inquiry for this study. The responses obtained from two qualitative studies were subjected to thematic analysis. Two thematic maps were integrated into a conceptual model.

Study 1 indicates that the politicians operating at the BOP resort to vote-bank segmentation, clientelism, mobilizing opinion leaders, short guerilla war against opposition and communication bombarding. Study 2 has elaborated on how poor voters perceive these strategies and form their opinions towards the party/candidate.

The findings of this study highlight the need for essential policy formulation to protect BOP consumers from deceptive political tactics.

This study develops a model of the effectiveness of voting strategies at the BOP. It also contributes to the literature on social influence theory by indicating how the three social influence processes (compliance, identification and internalization) result in different ways of accepting political influence.

The purpose of this paper is to draw from the diffusion of innovations theory to explore multi-levels of influences (i.e. individuals, networks, news attributes) on news sharing in social media.

A survey was designed and administered to 309 respondents. Structural equation modelling analysis was conducted to examine the three levels of influential factors. These included self-perceptions of opinion leadership and seeking at the individual level, perceived tie strength and homophily at the network level, and finally, perceived news credibility and news preference at the news attribute level.

The results revealed that the influences of self-perceptions of opinion leadership, perceived tie strength in online networks and perceived preference of online news had significant effects on users’ news sharing intention in social media. However, self-perceptions of opinion seeking, homophily, and perceived news credibility were not significant.

This is one of the first studies on news sharing in social media that focus on diverse levels of influential factors. In particular, the research suggests the viability of the diffusion of innovations theory to explain this pervasive global phenomenon. Further, the influential factors identified may help to stimulate active participation in social media platforms and ultimately enhance the sustainability of these platforms.

Several scholars have maintained that corporatist arrangements may contribute to a national consensus between groups with opposing interests (Katzenstein, 1985; Siaroff, 1999). Some have even described (neo) corporatism as a strategy for consensus building (Woldendorp, 1995). These general viewpoints seem to imply that participation in the various channels and networks in a corporatist system may influence participants to moderate their ideological attitudes, to become more centrist. Participation has a “civilising” effect. In a study of the Swedish industrial relations system Öberg and Svensson (2002) concluded, however, that there is not much trust across the class borders, a finding which questions the validity of these assumptions. It seems therefore appropriate to test these assumptions empirically in a variety of national settings.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of a leader’s communication style (LCS) on the quality of interpersonal exchanges between leaders and followers (LMX), and how this translates into the employee’s affective organizational commitment (AOC), in the context of Peru.

An integrated model of six dimensions is used to measure LCS. Using multiple hierarchical regressions and the Preacher and Hayes mediation model, the study focuses on determining the direct and indirect effect of each of the dimensions on LMX and organizational commitment.

The dimension preciseness shows a significant direct association to AOC. Four dimensions are significantly related with LMX: expressiveness, preciseness and questioningness with a positive sign, while verbal aggressiveness records an important negative one. The same four dimensions show an indirect effect on AOC through LMX. Emotionality and impression manipulativeness do not record significant results.

The research was carried out with a sample of 253 white-collar Peruvian professionals with high-level studies and managerial experience, which are not necessarily representative of the labor population. This research provides comprehensive evidence on how leaders’ communicative behavior may contribute to desirable outcomes such as employee commitment in a Latin American cultural context, although the findings may apply to other cultures.

This study contributes to clarify that each dimension of the LCS impacts differently on subordinate perceptions; leaders should understand this model and be able to make the necessary adjustments to their communication in order to obtain the desired results of leadership. The leader’s ability to communicate with a style characterized by expressiveness, precision, and questioning makes it easy to build high-quality LMX relationships for Peruvian employees. On the contrary, a communication style characterized by high levels of verbal aggressiveness may negatively affect subordinates, limiting the possibility of building high-quality LMX relationships. This, in turn, affects AOC of employees.

This study is a contribution to clarify that each feature of the LCS has a different impact on the perception of the subordinate, for which the leaders should be trained to understand this model and be able to make the necessary adjustments to obtain the desired results of leadership. The leader’s ability to communicate with a style characterized by expressiveness, precision and questioning makes it easy to build high-quality LMX relationships for Peruvian employees. On the contrary, a communication style characterized by high levels of verbal aggressiveness will negatively impact subordinates, limiting the possibility of building high-quality LMX relationships.

The value lies in revisiting the construct “leader’s communication style” to turn it into an instrument for the exercise of leadership. It is a contribution in favor of leaders becoming aware that their own communication style constitutes an instrument of effective leadership and a lever to optimize the commitment of their collaborators toward the organization.