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Previous research has focused on identifying factors that influence buyers who uses price as a cue to quality. However, little work has been done to explain the theory of association and the psychological processes behind the buyer’s price‐quality association. This study examines the process from a psychological perspective and examines some antecedent variables in the formation of a price‐quality inferential belief. Data is collected for two product categories among a sample of young respondents. Results show that (1) the link between perceptual and inferential belief about the price‐quality association is stronger when the perceptual belief is based on direct purchase experience rather than on advertising; (2) buyers that lack direct purchase experience of a product category tends to rely on advertising to form their inferential belief. Implications are discussed, limitations are noted and directions for future research are indicated.

The global nature of today’s business environment, coupled with technological advances, has resulted in leaders working with an increasingly diverse workforce worldwide. An emerging stream of research examines the beliefs that individuals, groups, and organizations have regarding diversity. The purpose of this paper is to add to this work by looking at subordinate perceptions of a leader’s beliefs about diversity and how that relates to a leader’s performance.

Using archival data, the authors examine 33,976 leaders (from 36 different countries and more than 4,000 companies). This study includes performance ratings from each leader’s supervisor as well as perceptual measures of diversity beliefs from their direct reports and a measure of national culture as a moderator.

The research finds that employee perceptions of a leader’s diversity beliefs are related to supervisor ratings of the target leader’s performance. In addition, the relationship between a leader’s diversity beliefs and the target leader’s performance rating is stronger in cultures high in performance orientation (PO) than in cultures low in PO.

The limitations include the use of an archival data set as well as an assigned country score for our measure of culture.

While existing research has examined the impact of self-rated measures of diversity beliefs, there is little empirical research that examines how employee perceptions of a leader’s diversity beliefs will impact performance. The authors address this need by examining whether employee-rated perceptions of the leader’s diversity beliefs are related to a supervisor-rated measure of leader performance. In addition, the authors examine the moderating influence of societal culture on this relationship.

This study aims to propose a tool for conceptualizing and operationalizing perceptual distance in client-contractor collaborations: the perceptual distance monitor (PDM). This paper explains how this monitor was developed and used to examine the impact of perceptual distance on project outcomes.

This paper developed the PDM by gathering quantitative survey data from client and contractor representatives. Structural equation modeling tested the predictive validity of perceptual distance on project outcomes.

The PDM enables a valid and reliable assessment of the perceptual distance between client and contractor in projects. Moreover, the PDM shows that project outcomes suffer if parties have different perceptions of project objectives, project managers’ competences and the level of trust in the collaboration. These findings confirm the predictive validity of the PDM.

The study builds on survey data representing dyadic perceptions from 38 measurements in collaborative projects. This paper may not have identified all the effects of perceptual distance on project outcomes, as the analyses were conducted at the project level. This research underlines the importance of gathering dyadic data for studies in interorganizational settings.

Perceptual distance can be expected between clients and contractors, and higher perceptual distance is generally associated with lower project outcomes. Using the PDM, project managers can concretize, discuss and monitor this perceptual distance over time. The PDM provides project managers with a useful tool to prevent the escalation of conflicts and project failure.

Based on agency theory and social identity theory, this study provides a unique and validated conceptualization and operationalization of perceptual distance between client and contractor in interorganizational collaborations and supply chains.

This paper aims to investigate the paradox of whether prestigious goods help or inhibit a consumer’s social affinity. The goal of this research is to explore whether pursuit of prestigious goods increases consumers’ social affinity or decreases their social affinity, and, more importantly, to understand the mechanisms that drive this process.

Three laboratory experimental studies and a social network study are conducted to show that consumers hold inconsistent beliefs about the social implication of prestigious goods.

In Study 1, the authors showed that prestigious goods evoked stronger social affinity for the self than for the other. In Study 2, the authors showed that people evaluated themselves high in social affinity when they brought a prestigious wine to a party compared to when they brought a cheaper, generic wine, but evaluated others low in social affinity when they brought the same prestigious wine. In Study 3, the authors showed the mediating effects of social image and boastfulness on social affinity. Study 4 utilizes social network study to further validate previous findings in a field setting.

For high-end retailers, the authors suggest framing their promotional messages to explicitly highlight how owning prestigious goods will benefit them (i.e. social image). It is important that these retail managers (and salespeople alike) make it more salient on how their prestigious goods socially benefit the consumer (the self). Thus, it is important to get consumers to think about how a prestigious item looks on them and not on others. However, marketers must be prudent when constructing these messages, as the link between prestigious consumption and network development is merely perceptual.

The findings demonstrate that consuming prestigious goods increases social affinity via positive social image for the self. When evaluating others, the authors demonstrate that consuming prestigious goods decreases social affinity via boastfulness. In sum, owning prestigious items may seem beneficial socially to the self, but people have negative perceptions (boastfulness) of those who own the same prestigious goods. Hence, there seems to be a discrepancy in how the authors evaluate themselves versus how they evaluate others with the same prestigious goods.

This study aims to understand the learner behaviour of millennials for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in the post-adoption stage by extending the theory of Unified Theory of Acceptance and User Technology 2 (UTAUT2) with expectancy confirmation model (ECM) along with personal innovativeness as the exogenous, satisfaction as a mediating and continued intention as an endogenous construct.

This study applied a cross-sectional research design by using a survey method to collect primary data with a structured questionnaire. Convenience sampling was used to collect data from millennial MOOC users, and partial least square structural equation modelling method was applied for data analysis.

The results indicate that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, hedonic motivation influence satisfaction. Similarly, performance expectancy, hedonic motivation, personal innovativeness and satisfaction influence the continued intention for MOOCs.

In terms of limitations, the study applied a cross-sectional research design that could lead to data collection bias. Similarly, the study used convenience sampling as the authors did not have access to the participant list of users from MOOC platforms.

The research highlights various insights to all the stakeholders on improving MOOC satisfaction and enhance the continued intention for millennial learners.

The findings of this research bridge this gap by examining the post-adoption usage behaviour of MOOCs by extending the baseline model of UTAUT2 with personal innovativeness and integrating it with ECM.

There is a wealth of studies which suggest that managers' positive perceptions/expectations can considerably influence the organisational performance; unfortunately, little empirical evidence has been obtained from development studies. This research aims to focus on the perceptual and behavioural trait differences of successful and unsuccessful aid workers, and their relationship with organisational performance.

Through web‐based survey, 244 valid responses were obtained from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)‐aid managers worldwide. Five perception related factors were extracted and used for cluster analysis to group the respondents. Each cluster's perception/behaviour‐related factors and organisational performance variables were compared by ANOVA.

It was discovered that Japanese's positive perception/expectation about work and their local colleagues was related to higher organisational performance, and conversely, the negative perception on their part was generally associated with negative behaviour and lower organisational performance. Moreover, in a development context, lower work‐related stress and feelings of resignation toward work were strongly associated with the acceptability of cross‐cultural work environment.

The differences in perceptual tendencies suggest that cautious consideration is advised since these findings may mainly apply to Japanese aid managers. However, as human nature is universal, positive perception and behaviour would bring out positive output in most organisations.

This study extended the contextualised “Pygmalion effect” and has clarified the influence of perception/expectation on counter‐part behaviour and organisational performance in development aid context, where people‐related issues have often been ignored. This first‐time research provides imperial data on the significant role of positive perception on the incumbent role holder.

The purpose of this study is to explore how promotive and prohibitive voice behaviors of Indian information technology (IT) employees vary in their relationship with other factors. This study investigates a moderated mediation model involving different factors like managerial openness, voice self-efficacy, turnover intentions and promotive and prohibitive voice behaviors.

This study uses a cross-sectional design to collect data from 254 executives working in the IT companies located in India. This study uses IBM SPSS 22 along with the Hayes’ PROCESS module to investigate the moderation and mediation effects.

The results reveal that both promotive and prohibitive voice behaviors fully mediate the negative relationship between managerial openness and employee turnover intentions. The results also support that voice self-efficacy strengthens the relationship between managerial openness and promotive voice behavior but not prohibitive voice behavior.

This is one of the very few studies to explore voice behavior from the Indian context and thus heeds to the call made by researchers to explore voice in a non-Western context. The treatment of voice as a combination of promotive and prohibitive voice rather than as a unitary concept enhances the voice literature and invites further research.

To investigate, analyse and identify the reasons for contradictory conclusions in past studies of country of origin (COO) influences on buyers' beliefs and purchase intentions.

A review of 96 published studies, discussions and commentaries, with separate sections relating to methodological an contextual issues, the latter in separate sections relating to national cultures and stereotypes, cross‐cultural differences, product‐brand‐market‐segment variations, hybridisation, and price and communications strategies.

Study contexts and methodologies varied significantly, often without an explicit rationale, and were judged inappropriate in some cases. Conflicting findings seem to be largely the result of this variation.

The observed variations and contradictions hinder generalisation and theory building. COO studies should be pursued from a target customer perspective and should adopt a comprehensive approach that incorporates the influences, interactions and potential interconnectedness of factors such as brand names, hybridization of offerings, communication and promotional activities, customer characteristics and market dynamics.

Marketing practitioners cannot treat COO as a self‐contained marketing and marketing communications strategy, but need to consider the effects, interactions and interconnectedness of other influences on customer beliefs and buying intentions. A more integrated approach is urgently required. The Norwegian Seafood Export Council's success in exporting to Taiwan offers a case example of effective implementation of COO strategy.

A wide‐ranging evaluation of the frequently flawed research studies available as the basis for developing theory and practice with respect to the role and effect of COO in marketing.

The purpose of this research is to address the important question of how to attract and retain a fragmented and ecologically diverse youth segment in a rapidly changing retail banking sector such as Malaysia.

The study utilises a combination of theoretical frameworks, and quantitative techniques to ascertain the most important motivational goals for Malaysian youth when making e‐channels choices.

This study generates empirical evidence which supports the general theory that prominent cultural values such as those that stress integrity of the referent group, self‐reliance and social identity are important influencers of the likelihood of adopting selected electronic banking channels.

Further research is needed on all retail banking e‐channels apart from those currently most readily accessible in Malaysia. Similarly, researchers may consider other demographic segments for purposes of generating more robust theoretical frameworks.

Service innovation characteristics as well as prominent cultural values that stress, self‐reliance, integrity of the reference group and social identity and compliance may have significant implications for marketing practice even where diverse youth segments are concerned.

This study is the first that seeks to ascertain the importance of prominent individual cultural values as predictors of consumer choice in the context of e‐banking services in Malaysia. Therefore, this study thus sets an important benchmark for further research in the area.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the importance and influence of the epistemologies: “empiricism”, “rationalism” and “positivism” in library and information science (LIS).

First, outlines the historical development of these epistemologies, by discussing and identifying basic characteristics in them and by introducing the criticism that has been raised against these views. Second, their importance for and influence in LIS have been examined.

The findings of this paper are that it is not a trivial matter to define those epistemologies and to characterise their influence. Many different interpretations exist and there is no consensus regarding current influence of positivism in LIS. Arguments are put forward that empiricism and positivism are still dominant within LIS and specific examples of the influence on positivism in LIS are provided. A specific analysis is made of the empiricist view of information seeking and it is shown that empiricism may be regarded as a normative theory of information seeking and knowledge organisation.

The paper discusses basic theoretical issues that are important for the further development of LIS as a scholarly field.