Search results

Studying bus local public transport in 20 Italian provincial capitals, the present paper aims to identify organizational factors to assess different modes of service managerial steering.

Starting from bureaucratic theory, the paper analyzes four different modes of managerial steering in a regression model that accounts for several variables to assess the quality of Italian bus local public service transport.

The research shows that a network managerial structure performs significantly better than any other type. The 20 provincial capitals are homogeneous in relation to the variables considered. Italian bus local public transport is managed by bureaucratic public organizations. Adhocracy, as opposed to machine bureaucracy, seems to be the more effective mode of managerial steering for sector specific aspects in different capitals, despite that, network managerial structure – associated adhocracy – is used only in five capitals (main cities).

The paper highlights that the dichotomy between machine bureaucracy versus adhocracy shows interesting considerations related to different mode to management of Italian bus local public service transport.

This paper explores how the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) conflicts with annual budgeting and how University actors responded to such conflicting demands in a public university in Tanzania, a developing country.

The data for this study were collected from interviews, observations and document reviews. Data analysis processes were guided by the concepts of organizational façades and organized hypocrisy.

The findings show that while the state required the university to implement the MTEF, budget preparers and managers were concentrating on basic budgeting problems in annual budgeting. As a result of these conflicting demands decoupling occurred, as there were inconsistencies between the talk and actions of actors in MTEF implementation. In response, actors engaged in organized hypocrisy. The talk and actions were organized by developing pro-effective and symbolic layers. The pro-effective layer showed that actors were concentrating on annual budgeting, while the symbolic layer, through the creation of façades, showed that actors symbolically implemented the MTEF.

The paper suggests that budgetary reforms of governments, Western donors, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and bilateral donors should focus on addressing the basic problems in annual budgeting rather than advocating complex reforms that compel actors to engage in hypocrisy and developing façades. Moreover, university management should address basic budgeting problems to avoid budgeting games during annual budgeting.

This is the first paper to employ the concept of organized hypocrisy to investigate the MTEF. By demonstrating the pro-effective layer, the paper responds to the call for investigation of how accounting works in practice (van Helden et al., 2021). Moreover, by presenting the symbolic layer, the paper responds to the call to investigate how facades are created (Michelon et al., 2016). The paper demonstrates how the concept of organized hypocrisy works well with the concept of organizational facades.

This paper investigates how the market orientation of SMEs toward public sector customers enables firms to participate and succeed in public procurement.

The authors used a survey-based methodology. First, the authors reconfigured an empirical construct of market orientation for private sector markets to measure the market orientation toward public sector customers. Then they conducted a survey of Finnish firms to test the construct and how it predicted firm performance in public procurement.

The authors find empirical support for firms to adopt a market orientation toward public sector customers. Their results suggest that customer and competitor orientations are positive predictors of participating and winning supply contracts in public sector tenders.

Self-reported survey data from a single country may limit the generalizability of results.

This paper is the first to report a market orientation toward public sector customers and describe how it is related to supplier performance in public procurement.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of business analytics and environmental orientation toward green innovation and green competitive advantage. In addition, the study aims to explore the mediating role of green innovation in the impact of business analytics and environmental orientation on green competitive advantage.

Based upon the theoretical analysis of existing literature, several hypotheses have been developed. Data was gathered using a survey method. The survey was conducted using online portal, 388 valid responses have been processed using SPSS 23.0 and AMOS 23.0 for empirical analysis. Two steps were used, first reliability and validity have been measured. Following this, the authors employed structural equation modeling technique to test hypothetical relationships.

The results from the authors’ empirical analysis indicate that business analytics and environmental orientation have a pivotal role toward green innovation as well as green competitive advantage. If the results are seen comparatively, then it can be indicated that the role of business analytics is more powerful compared with the environmental orientation. Although environmental orientation is a key factor of green innovation, but its direct role toward green competitive advantage is not so strong. Similarly, to check the other mechanisms, the role of green innovation as a mediator was explored. Empirical findings have established the mediating role of green innovation in the influence of business analytics and environmental orientation on green competitive advantage. Thus, the results confirm a mechanism of green innovation in the impact of business analytics and environmental orientation on green competitive advantage.

The study captures the attention of decision-makers and highlights that business leaders need to emphasize on business analytics while making managerial decisions related to green innovation and green competitive advantage.

For the first time, this study explored the role of business analytics and environmental orientation together toward green innovation and green competitive advantage. The study adds value to the existing literature and opens new avenues for scholarly research in the area of managerial decision-making.

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.

The purpose of this study was to assess whether internal marketing tends to influence the perception of bank employees regarding the strategic orientations of banks toward the market, brand and value. The authors also aimed to determine whether employees' organizational commitment mediates the relationship between internal marketing and the three strategic orientations and whether they influence bank employees' perception of obtaining a competitive advantage.

The authors conducted a survey with 832 bank employees using an online questionnaire. The authors performed data analysis by modeling structural equations with data estimation using the PLS-SEM.

The results showed that internal marketing positively influences bank employees' perception of banks' strategic marketing orientations and through that their perception of a competitive advantage. The authors also note that organizational commitment can partially mediate the relationship between internal marketing and the strategic orientations tested in this study.

The findings indicate that banks' investment in employee valuation tends to generate positive results in relation to their adherence to marketing strategies, with the potential to result in a competitive advantage.

The results demonstrate the strength of internal marketing in the strategic orientations of banks, indicating that having employees who are committed to their bank contributes to the delivery of a high-quality service focused on the external customers, generating a competitive advantage.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between time orientation and strategic practices in the context of an Arab country. Toward this end, the paper studies a conditional process model that assesses the role of visioning ability and perceived uncertainty in explaining how future-oriented managers may be better at strategic management.

The study adopts a quantitative research design with closed-ended questionnaires as the main mode of data collection, and applies bootstrapping technique to test the significance and validity of the conditional process model.

The results confirm that time orientation influences strategic practices in an organization through its impact on a manager’s visioning ability, when uncertainty in the environment is perceived as low-moderate. The study also notes that local managers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) tend to be relatively future oriented and demonstrate a greater preference toward strategic work in comparison to operational tasks.

The scope of this study has been limited to UAE nationals, and generalization of these results should be done with caution. Future research is recommended on a wider geographical area, such that cross-national results can be used to better understand the concept of time orientation in Arab countries.

Findings of this paper contribute to the literature by studying the concept of time orientation in a unique cultural domain. Moreover, by providing a theoretically relevant model for understanding the relationship between time orientation and strategic practices, the study highlights the significance of environmental uncertainty, and the importance of developing the visioning abilities of those involved in strategic roles in an organization.

The aim of this study is to analyze in depth the possible influence of a firm's market orientation on its own attitudinal loyalty toward a supplier.

An empirical study was carried out through two structured surveys of 141 industrial firms. Data were compiled in two stages (with a time lag of one year). The time lag instituted between the collection of market orientation data and the other model constructs alleviates the common method problem.

The results show that the direct influence of the buyer's market orientation on attitudinal loyalty is negative but that an indirect positive effect also exists through communication, conflict, satisfaction, and trust. The research also reveals that these results are not contingent on the buyer's dependence on the supplier.

This study's main contribution consists of shedding new light on the intense marketing debate about the effects of market orientation.

Practitioners can use the findings of this research to segment their customer base and develop specific programs adapted to each target.

The present work is the first to directly address the influence of a firm's market orientation on its attitudinal loyalty toward its strategic suppliers. Structured academic research on this topic is lacking, even though more firms are market‐oriented because of increasing competition, which means that the interest of suppliers in the effects of this orientation will become more pronounced.

The purpose of this paper is to verify and extend the application of the policy acceptance model (PAM) in the field of green behavior. Under the PAM framework, the authors develop and empirically examine on how employee perception of corporate green policy (perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness) increases the acceptance of corporate green policy, which further leads to two types of employee green behavior. The authors also test the moderating roles of moral reflectiveness and performance orientation on these relationships.

The authors collected complete survey data from 223 work professionals in this study. Multiple regression method was used to test the hypotheses.

The results showed that there were significant positive impacts of two types of employee perceptions of corporate green policy (perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness) on their attitudes toward corporate green policy. Second, this study reported positive relationships between employees’ attitudes toward corporate green policy and their two types of green behavior. Finally, supplemental analyses supported moderated mediation models, that is, moral reflectiveness and performance orientation, respectively, and moderated indirect effects of employee perceptions on green behaviors through attitude toward corporate green policy.

The data came from a narrow demographic population, which restricts the generalizability of the findings and also raises questions about the specificity of green behaviors manifest in different industries. Besides, this study used cross-sectional, self-reported data, which limits our ability to draw causal conclusions.

Companies can shape employee perceptions regarding the usefulness and ease of corporate green policy to induce and consolidate employees’ task-related and proactive green behaviors.

This research will help companies to pay more attention to employees’ reflections and attitudes toward green policies, thus effectively promoting employees’ green behavior in the workplace. These actions will further promote the green development of the economy and society.

The authors extend the PAM framework to the area of green behavior. The PAM is applied to a more micro level of corporate green policy. Further, this paper points out that employees’ instrumental value (performance orientation) and moral trait (moral reflectiveness) moderate the impact of employees’ policy perceptions on their green behaviors.

This paper aims to investigate the moderation effect of customer orientation variable on the influence of professional competence toward the quality of strategy implementation.

This research is quantitative explanative associative, which is trying to explain the causality relationship between exogenous and endogenous variables. The research was conducted in the Shariah banking office in Central Java Province. The population of this research is all top and middle levels of Shariah Commercial Bank in Central Java region. The sampling technique used in this research is non-probability sampling, that is, purposive sampling, which is the method of determining the sample based on certain criteria and the research sample obtained is 113 respondents. The research approach used is quantitative with the analysis tool of Generalized Structure Component Analysis.

There is influence of professional competence variable and customer orientation on quality of implementation strategy. The higher the professional competence and customer orientation, the higher the quality of strategy implementation. It is also found that customer orientation moderates the influence of professional competence variables, which are quasi-moderating and reinforcing.

This research has two sources of problems, which are research gap and business phenomenon. Research on Drucker’s business purpose (1954) is realized when a firm identifies the relationship between strategic methods and its ability to generate profits. This research attempts to solve the problem or gap between market orientation and business performance, which has been widely researched by marketing experts, but still shows controversial results. In this research, the researcher takes the definition of Narver and Slater (1990) to examine market orientation because the mostly found empirical research on market orientation and innovation (Han, et.al. 1998; Subin and Workman, 2004; Ferrel and Luke, 2000) has used this conceptualization and its associated operations. Therefore, to compare and distinguish the results of this research with the results of previous research, this research uses the definition of Narver and Slater (1990). No previous study has comprehensively studied the moderating effects of customer orientation on the relation between profesional competence toward quality of strategy implementation, especially in a commercial bank in Central Java region.