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There are many factors that contribute to a person's career choice. The decision of whether or not to join the family business is certainly most influenced by parents. The aim of this research is to determine how much of an impact parents have on their next-generation family members' (NGFMs) decision to join the family business.

Following a positivistic paradigm, a cross-sectional design was followed using a quantitative, self-administered questionnaire through a judgemental sampling technique. A structured questionnaire was distributed to South African respondents who have parents who own a family business. The data were analysed using Statistica.

The results indicate that parental style, culture, self-efficacy and parental identification were found to influence the NGFMs' intention to join the family business significantly. Their decisions can be influenced by several factors, and parents can better manage these aspects by being aware of these influencing factors.

Given the imminent ageing of a large cohort of senior leaders, this research adds to the body of knowledge by highlighting the necessity for committed, willing and ready next-generation family members (NGFMs) to ensure efficient succession in family businesses. Therefore, effective management is required for succession-planning, particularly from the perspective of the successor.

This study, therefore, responds to calls for more in-depth quantitative studies on family businesses in general and on Black-owned family businesses in South Africa in particular. This study will evaluate the significance of parent influence on NGFMs to join Black family-owned businesses in South Africa. This research will assist family business owners and their families in understanding their children's intentions, designing and evolving an appropriate system to instill necessary traits, skills and attitudes in the children, preparing them for upcoming challenges, adding new perspectives to the family business and ensuring its profitability and long-term growth.

This study examined the psychometric properties of intention to drop out and study satisfaction measures for first-year South African students. The factorial validity, item bias, measurement invariance and reliability were tested.

A cross-sectional design was used. For the study on intention to drop out, 1,820 first-year students participated, whilst 780 first-year students participated in the study on satisfaction with studies. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), differential item functioning (DIF), measurement invariance and internal consistency were used to test the scales.

A one-factor structure was confirmed for both scales. For the intention to drop out scale, Items 3 and 4 were identified with statistically significant item bias; however, these differences had no practical impact. Except for scalar invariance for language, sufficient measurement invariance was established. No problematic items were identified for the study satisfaction scale.

In essence, this study provides evidence of two short measures that are culturally sensitive that could be used as short and valid measures across contextual boundaries as practically valuable tools to measure intention to drop out and study satisfaction in diverse and multicultural contexts.

This study contributes to limited research on bias and invariance analyses for scales that can be used in interventions to identify students at risk of leaving the university and utilising psychometric analyses to ensure the applicability of these two scales in diverse and multicultural settings.

This paper aims to outline the role that serendipity can play in providing a complementary and previously unrepresented vector in deliberate and emergent strategies within organizations.

The paper is conceptual in nature and draws upon the serendipity pattern in sociological theory and serendipitous relations in developmental sciences to provide a framework for executives to consider when examining the process of strategy formation. Two case vignettes are used to illustrate the difference between luck and serendipity and the paper also traces key micro foundations of serendipity by returning to the original serendipity fable and a famed science experiment producing “floppy-eared” rabbits.

The notion of chance favoring the “prepared firm” is espoused where the prepared organizational mind is positioned as an antecedent of serendipitous strategy formation. This is based on Louis Pasteur’s famous aphorism, “chance favors the prepared mind.” Components of the prepared firm include deep domain knowledge, anticipatory mindset, noticing, abductive reasoning, elaboration and relations development.

The paper is a conceptual articulation of a novel concept that now requires deeper empirical case development and ultimately statistical validation. The paper suggests linkages between serendipity and theories of absorptive capacity and the attention-based view of the firm.

Several mindsets, capabilities and relations for architecting organizational serendipity are suggested for executives using a stylized framework.

From a strategy process perspective, the Mintzberg and Waters seminal article “Of strategies deliberate and emergent” is complemented by considering “floppy-eared” strategy characterized by unexpected, anomalous and strategic datum.

This article intends to explore critical factors that affect the adoption of organic farming in emerging economies. The authors respond to the calls from policymakers, non-government organizations, business firms and scholars to improve the farmers' awareness of the negative impact of synthetic chemical pesticides, phosphorus, potassium fertilizers and mineral nitrogen used in traditional farming.

Through self-administered survey questionnaires, responses were obtained from 397 farmers (conventional) regarding organic farming adoption in Haryana (India). The survey responses were collected between October 2022 and December 2022. The authors apply the “partial least squares structural equation modeling” (PLS-SEM) to test the framed hypotheses.

The present article demonstrates six critical determinants of organic farming adoption, i.e. behavioral, cultivation, economic, governmental, marketing, and social factors. These six factors drive 71.0% (R²) variation in organic farming adoption. Governmental factors have a positive but insignificant influence on organic farming adoption. Interestingly, the impact of behavioral and cultivation factors is crucial per path coefficient values.

For the first time, the authors conducted a study on organic farming adoption in Haryana that lies in its context-specific implementation, utilization of localized knowledge and expertise, regional policy support, agricultural diversification and community participation. Future research can build upon by adding agriculture scientists to the study to respond to the cost, quality of the crop and impact of socio-economic policies as moderators/mediators on adoption decisions.

One of the greatest challenges faced by the 1994 post-apartheid government in South Africa is the housing problem that has persisted for almost 30 years into democracy. Innovation in research and practice is required to address this problem. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objective.

This paper presents an argument for housing knowledge management as one part of a much larger system of housing provision and critically compares information variations on one hypothetical, low-cost housing unit adapted for varying climatic regions. It aims to enquire if there is an overlap in information.

The findings do confirm a noteworthy overlap in the information of the varying units. Therefore, knowledge management of the information would prove effective and may contribute in part to housing provision.

The study is limited to assessing the information changes made to the contract documentation of the housing unit.

The paper argues that knowledge management of this overlapping information could impact housing provision by providing knowledge power to those affected by the housing problem.

The findings are a unique perspective presented through a knowledge management lens. In addition, the said knowledge management lens provides a platform to raise additional questions. When seeking answers to these questions, it is expected that research sub-themes would be identified focussing further research studies towards finding answers.

To date, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the use of implicit measures in the service research domain is limited. This paper aims to introduce implicit measures and explain why, or for what purpose, they are worthwhile to consider; how these measures can be used; and when and where implicit measures merit the service researcher’s consideration.

To gain an understanding of how implicit measures could benefit service research, three promising implicit measures are discussed, namely, the implicit association test, the affect misattribution procedure and the propositional evaluation paradigm. More specifically, this paper delves into how implicit measures can support service research, focusing on three focal service topics, namely, technology, affective processes including customer experience and service employees.

This paper demonstrates how implicit measures can investigate paramount service-related subjects. Additionally, it provides essential methodological “need-to-knows” for assessing others’ work with implicit measures and/or for starting your own use of them.

This paper introduces when and why to consider integrating implicit measures in service research, along with a roadmap on how to get started.

This study aims to investigate the nonfinancial information related to capitals (intellectual, human, social and relationship, and natural) demanded by professional investors in their decision-making process, which can improve the usefulness of integrated reporting for this target audience.

A Systematic Literature Review in the Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar databases enabled the identification of information demanded by professional investors. This information was presented to experienced Brazilian investors participating in a focus group to align the theory on this topic with professional practice.

The results allow us to conclude that the focus group participants' perception is aligned with the international literature, both in the importance given to most of the nonfinancial information items identified and in the lack of interest in using integrated reporting in investment decisions. Nonetheless, the general perception of the focus group is not aligned with the literature procedures in terms of social and environmental information.

A study with a larger scope and the adoption of other approaches can contribute to broaden the understanding of the perspectives of professional investors in Brazil, as well as in other regions.

The authors provide evidence that contributes to discussions about the information to be disclosed in integrated reports. Their results are useful to legislators, regulators, report preparers and investors.

The authors investigate the information demanded by professional investors in their decision-making process aiming to fill the literature gap relating the determinants of the integrated reporting disclosure and what is demanded by this target audience as a minimum content to be reported. As an additional result they offer interesting contributions to the literature providing reflections on nonfinancial information which have become important for Brazilian investors as from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The determination of human behaviours due to individual characteristics (personality traits) or situational factors has long remained inconclusive. Although the literature stream on personality as the determinants of behaviour is voluminous, the interest of researchers is also growing towards organisational situational cues as the determinant of behaviours. According to situation strength theory (SST), behaviours are determined by situations in strong situations and by personality in weak situations. This study aims to propose a theoretical model of intrapreneurial behaviour (IB) emanation from empowering leadership (EL) by extending the epistemology of SST under the influence of organisational strong situations of job autonomy (JA) and perceived organisational support (POS).

Using SST, the present study argues that strong situations play a key role in determining human behaviours, and the same can be viewed deductively to assess IB.

The study attempts to propose whether EL is capable of predicting IB under the strong situation effect of JA and POS while dampening the impact of human personality characteristics.

The current study offers a significant departure from current human resource practices in person-situation dialectics, moving away from personality assessments and toward the creation of cues from strong situations for fostering human behaviour. As a result, personality researchers are being encouraged to conduct a reality check on the extensive personality research conducted in occupational settings. Considering organisational situational cues can impact human resource scope in areas such as talent management, selection, promotion and employment.

Risk information provides information to enable stakeholders to make informed decisions about a company. Corporate communications should be readable and unbiased so as not to hamper disclosure usefulness. This study assesses whether risk disclosures in the integrated reports are readable and unbiased.

The readability and narrative tone of South African listed companies' risk and risk management disclosures as disclosed in their integrated reports are analysed using automated software for the Top 40 JSE listed companies from 2015 to 2019.

The results show that risk and risk management disclosures are unreadable and lack any improvement in readability during the period. Additionally, these disclosures are biased toward narrative tones signalling communality and certainty.

The study adds to the literature on the readability of corporate reports, by focussing on the readability and narrative tone of risk and risk management disclosures during a period of increased scrutiny over the content of such disclosures. Also, by analysing risk disclosure and risk management disclosure separately, and by performing trend analysis to determine whether requirement changes related to content (specifically King IV) affect readability and narrative tones.

Agriculture in Ethiopia relies heavily on traditional farm power sources and is designated by the lowest farm machinery access, in contrast to other Sub-Sahara African (SSA) countries. The purpose of this research is to analyze the heterogeneity of mechanization service transactions and factors determining farmers' cooperation in mechanization clusters and willingness to accept land consolidation.

The authors conducted a cross-sectional survey of producer households in major crop production areas in the Oromia, SNNPR, Amhara and Tigray regions. The sampling design involved three stages: districts were selected using a stratified sampling approach accompanied by simple random samples of kebele units and producer households in the second and final stages, respectively.

This study’s results show that mechanization service costs, service relationships, clustering and land consolidation exhibit significant heterogeneity across the study areas. Cluster farming was found to be advantageous against diseconomies, rationalized by upgrading the mechanization scale. The probit model parameterization of the probability distributions reveals that household, land, crop, mechanization service, remoteness and location-related factors determine participation in mechanization clusters and willingness to accept land consolidation.

Fostering cooperation by focusing on constraints and demand of users is suggested to reduce transaction costs and expand hired mechanization services to unaddressed areas. The findings are relevant to most SSA countries where mechanization development is hampered by land fragmentation.

Limited information is available on agricultural mechanization development for smallholder farmers, particularly in Ethiopia, and this study adds empirical evidence about the synergy between cluster farming and mechanization, horizontal coordination and alternative supply models.