Search results

Globalization and increased outsourcing have contributed to increased supply chain complexity, exposing firms to greater vulnerability in the areas of product safety and supply chain security. Meanwhile, stakeholders pressure firms to ensure that their products are safe, and their supply chains are secure. Drawing from stakeholder theory, this paper aims to explore how the supply chain characteristics of distance and power affect the adoption of consumer protection (CP) practices, which ensure product safety and supply chain security.

Using primary survey data from a sample of Canadian manufacturing firms, this research examines the relationships among supply chain characteristics, adoption of CP practices and firm performance.

Analysis supported the use of two practices related to product safety (consumer education and product design) and three practices for supply chain security (packaging, tracking and authenticity). Greater cultural distance between the focal firm and its suppliers was positively associated with investments in safer design practices, while increased geographical distance between the focal firm and the customer was significantly related to increased consumer education. Moreover, as power of a focal firm relative to its suppliers increased, so too did investments in supply chain security. Finally, CP practices were related to improved operational performance along multiple dimensions.

This research focuses on the critical role of two key stakeholder groups in improving product safety and supply chain security: suppliers and customers. The authors add to the theoretical discussion of product safety and supply chain security by identifying critical differences between suppliers and customers for the focal firm. Second, the research informs the managerial community of the potential benefits of investments in CP practices.

Strategy implementation is a critical component of firm performance and middle managers play a key role in the implementation process. This study was conducted to enhance the authors’ understanding of how middle managers influence strategy implementation (SI) effectiveness by investigating the impact of leadership and work team coordination.

A field study was conducted using interviews and survey data gathered from executive managers, middle managers and work team members within a large municipal organization undergoing a major strategic change.

Middle manager transformational and instrumental leadership have a direct positive impact on work team SI effectiveness. Additionally, middle manager transformational leadership has an indirect positive effect on work team SI effectiveness through coordination.

The study offers insights into managers and practitioners seeking to improve SI effectiveness by highlighting the importance of middle manager leadership development and the coordination of interdependent tasks within work teams.

The study provides valuable insight into an important but previously unstudied relationship between middle manager leadership and SI effectiveness. The work also helps bridge the chasm between leadership research and strategy research by linking leadership behavior to SI effectiveness – a key ingredient of firm performance.

Lens of conservation of resources (COR) theory has been used to study how organizations can create resource passageways for their employees via managers. This has been examined in cross-cultural virtual work teams distributed across time and space within the high-resource loss context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Longitudinal field design was used in a transnational organization involving data collection at three times over eight months. At Time 1, qualitative methodology was used to propose a conceptual model. At Time 2 and Time 3, an online survey was used to collect data for 205 virtual work teams across 10 countries in the Asia–Pacific region pre and post “manager as coach” training respectively.

Using COR theory, the study highlights that “manager as coach” training is an effective resource for managers in the high resource depletion context of the pandemic. Access to timely support increases saliency for the resource-gain spiral and has a cross-over impact on virtual work team outcomes suggesting transferability of resources from managers to subordinates. Also, managers across all nationalities view coaching training as an equally valuable resource.

The study provides evidence for investment in timely and relevant support for managers to positively and swiftly impact virtual work teams during high-resource loss contexts.

The study expands COR crossover theory across space and time dimensions using a longitudinal field research design.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze to what extent and in what ways signaling theory has been explored within the field of international marketing. This paper systematically reviews the use of signaling theory in the field of international marketing. Communication is a core aspect of the international marketing process. Research in this field has explored effective and unique ways of improving the communication flow to reduce the asymmetry of information between international consumers and the firm. This notion is adopted, enhanced and strengthened by signaling theory. Signaling theory has recently received the attention of international marketing scholars.

The systematic review methodology was applied for the purpose of identifying the relevant studies. We extracted academic articles over the last 23 years from the domain of international marketing that directly contribute to signaling theory based on 57 journal articles extracted through the systematic review process.

Based on systematic research the results reveal that the topic has grown and continues to expand within the broader international marketing field. We offer a theoretical conceptual framework to better understand signaling theory in the context of international marketing.

The authors map and critically evaluate the use of signaling theory in international marketing. Relevance of signaling theory in international marketing is growing and authors present an integrative framework that organizes the existing literature, and provides scholars to further expand on emerging themes of the domain. The paper offers some useful future research directions.

This study theoretically investigates the extant literature published about circular economy and sustainable development to identify significant research themes, the most relevant authors, countries and journals.

Bibliometric analysis is used, followed by cluster formation using co-citation analysis. The clusters are discussed in-depth to identify emerging themes and future research areas.

By systematically reviewing 596 research articles, significant themes of research in this field were found. These include frameworks and indicators to define and assess the circular economy, circular business models and use cases, global and industrial contexts of application of circular economy and different dimensions of the circular economy.

Publications from only one database have been used. Only articles published in relevant academic journals have been used for the bibliometric analysis. For co-citation analysis and cluster formation, only articles with a high number of citations were selected.

The analysis of the various clusters revealed research areas that can be explored in future research to understand the circular economy better and implement its practices to attain sustainability.

This study clarifies how intra-organizational social capital (IOSC) and unit-organizational ambidexterity (UOA), using resource-based view and dynamic capability theory, together support organizational value creation. While there is research in strategic human resource management (SHRM) exploring the role of resources and its uses, there remains limited understanding of how resources are linked and their effective utilization in the service sector. This study aims to examine the mediating process linking employee-experienced service-oriented high-performance work systems (SHPWS) experienced by employees and service performance by integrating IOSC and UOA.

This study uses time lagged data from managers and employees of different branches of Chinese state-owned banks. To test the proposed hypotheses, path analysis was applied.

The path analysis results reveal that employee-experienced SHPWS is an important antecedent of service performance. Moreover, IOSC (as resources) and UOA (uses) strongly mediate the theorized relationship.

This study attempts to refine theory and practice with clearer, more insightful and coherent means to better understand and help unpack the ‘black box’ between SHPWS-performance relationships through a new linkage model.

Showrooming presents a complex and evolving challenge to retail managers, as it signifies the emergence of new forms of exchange rules. The purpose of this research is to investigate how factors responsible for information search and evaluation affect showrooming and also consider the consumer mindset as a moderator.

This research undertakes three experimental designs to investigate how the push (i.e. assortment size), pull (i.e. price discount), and mooring (i.e. sunk cost) factors influence consumers' showrooming intention. Specifically, consumers' maximizing tendency plays the role of moderator.

The results reveal that push, pull, and mooring factors are significantly related to consumers' showrooming intention. Furthermore, the findings show that maximizers have higher showrooming intention than satisficers in the context of the push, pull, and mooring factors.

By integrating the push-pull-mooring framework and the maximizing mindset theory, this research proposes a novel research model and the empirical testing results support six hypotheses. The findings add to the body of knowledge in showrooming behavior by taking consumer mindset into account. The results also provide implications for practitioners to develop their retail strategies.

Business research has highlighted the importance of knowledge transfer and innovation in multinational firms for better performance outcomes. However, the existing body of literature is characterized by differentiated theories, antecedents and outcomes. This study aims to address this gap by adopting a systematic approach to analyze knowledge transfer and innovation literature from the perspective of multinational organizations.

This study follows “preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses” (PRISMA) guidelines for conducting a systematic literature review. The study adopts a systematic approach for analyzing the literature using School of thought (S), Contexts (C), Methodologies (M), Triggers (T), Barriers (B), Facilitators (F) and Outcomes (O) framework (SCM-TBFO framework) devised for holistic literature review. The study analyzes 75 articles from reputed journals from 2000 to 2022.

In general, knowledge transfer and innovation in multinationals is a relatively new area and is evolving rapidly. There are many opportunities to study the various perspectives that are included in the SCM-TBFO framework. The key schools of thought included the evolutionary theory of innovation, institutional theory and internationalization theory. The studies had differing settings or contexts, including China, Europe, the USA and Taiwan. Further, key methodologies that were used included regression, case studies, structural equation modeling (SEM) and theoretical studies. Knowledge transfer and innovation triggers included competitive advantage, competitive pressure, constant requirements for better products and services, foreign direct investment (FDI) and globalization. Knowledge transfer and innovation facilitators were categorized into strategy-related facilitators, organization culture and orientation-related facilitators, and resource-related facilitators. Knowledge transfer and innovation barriers included autonomy, international knowledge dispersion, risk of knowledge leakage, search breadth, ambiguity and institutional voids. Key outcomes of knowledge transfer and innovation in multinationals included financial performance, innovation performance, knowledge flow, transfer effectiveness, patents and new product development.

By synthesizing the literature, the study aims to provide an overview of the current state of research on knowledge transfer and innovation in multinationals. The study develops a holistic model for fostering knowledge transfer and innovation in multinationals. The proposed novel framework can also be applied to perform a holistic assessment of the current literature in various research domains. Further, the study suggests future theory development and research agendas. The study also provides implications for practitioners using the framework to achieve more desirable outcomes.

The purpose of the current study is to assess Omani teachers’ performance on tasks related to the stages of engineering design. To achieve this, data from an engineering design test was used, and demographic variables that are correlated with this performance were identified.

This descriptive study employed a cross-sectional design and the collection of quantitative data. A sample of preservice science teachers from Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) (n = 70) participated in this study.

Findings showed low and moderate levels of proficiency related to the stages of engineering design. Differences between males and females in terms of performance on engineering design tasks were found, with females scoring higher overall on the assessment. Biology preservice teachers scored higher than teachers from the other two majors (physics and chemistry) in two subscales. There were also differences between teachers studying in the Bachelor of Science (BSc) program and the teacher qualification diploma (TQD) program.

This study provides an overview, in an Arab setting, of preservice science teachers’ proficiency with engineering design process (EDP) tasks. It is hoped that the results may lead to improved instruction in science teacher training programs in similar contexts. Additionally, this research demonstrates how EDP competency relates to preservice teacher gender, major and preparation program. Findings from this study will contribute to the growing body of research investigating the strengths and shortcomings of teacher education programs in relation to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education.

The disposition effect remains one of the most significant investor behavior puzzles. This study aims to consolidate the knowledge, explore current dynamics, elicit trends and offer future research directions to demystify the disposition effect.

This study applies the hybrid review method. It first used bibliometric analysis (212 documents), followed by content analysis (54 articles) to analyze the breadth and depth of literature on the disposition effect.

This study presents performance analysis and science mapping. It identifies five main research streams: evidence, implications and mitigation techniques; theoretical explanations; investor biases and hedonic framing; attributes, beliefs and preferences; and implications for asset pricing and market efficiency. This study further offers future research directions for disposition effect research.

This study deploys sequential bibliometric and content analysis. A meta-analysis of quantitative articles could provide specific insights regarding the disposition effect. Besides, this study is based on Scopus-indexed journals only.

This study benefits investors and portfolio managers as they learn effective ways to guard against the disposition effect. Policymakers may tweak tax laws to incentivize long-term holding, and regulators can run investor education campaigns to minimize the disposition effect’s consequences effectively.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is probably the first hybrid review of high-quality, contemporary articles on the disposition effect that offers science mapping, research streams, future research directions and a succinct summary of theories, contexts, characteristics and methods deployed in the field of research.