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The purpose of this paper is to explore the characteristics and personal values of a successful entrepreneur in order to understand the quality of such characteristics. Thus, this paper aims to investigate how these characteristics and personal values impact strategic decision-making and outcomes driving the success and growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The research question is answered through a single case study approach based on the case of the charismatic and flourishing entrepreneur and owner of Gemar Balloons, a balloon-manufacturing company established in the centre of Italy a century ago.

The paper shows how the success of SMEs in a dynamic environment is influenced by the central resource, “the entrepreneur”, whose entrepreneurial mindset, culture and leadership are essential and partially replicable. They allow strategic management to seek opportunities and develop innovation, achieving competitive advantages and creating wealth.

This paper contributes to an understanding of how values and specific personal characteristics establish an entrepreneurial mindset, culture and leadership, and whether and how these factors are exportable and repeatable. In this way, it allows a better understanding of how possible it is to establish an entrepreneurial mindset and culture by working on a younger generation's values and characteristics. Moreover, it explains why and how entrepreneurial SME leaders are best able to make decisions and manage resources strategically to create competitive advantages.

The paper is new because it shows the distinctive values and characteristics influencing the emerging strategic decision-making model and corporate outcomes.

The investigator of this study examined organizational involvement of employees in Saudi construction companies and a random sample was drawn from the participating companies in Riyadh and Dammam. Employees' levels of involvement in the construction companies, were compared on the basis of their personal characteristics. The sample was divided into two groups on the basis of employees' personal characteristics such as education, organizational tenure, pay, rank, and age. The results showed that there was a difference in the level of organizational involvement between employees on the basis of their five personal characteristics included in this study. Further, the findings of this study showed that the levels of employees' involvement in the construction companies differed as their personal characteristics differed. Employees with a low level of education showed a higher level of organizational involvement than did employees with a high level of education. Employees with long organizational tenure reported a higher level of involvement than did employees with short organizational tenure. Also, employees with a high salary showed a higher level of involvement than did employees with a low salary. Old employees showed a higher level of organizational involvement than young employees. High ranking employees showed a higher level of organizational involvement than did employees with a low rank.

Missing in most of the research on selling has been an examination of the process from the point of view of the customer. When satisfaction in selling has been considered, researchers have focused on the satisfaction of the salesperson with his job and/or the impact of this job satisfaction on performance (e.g. Bluen, Barling & Burns, 1990; Churchill, Ford & Walker, 1979; Pruden & Peterson, 1971). To concentrate on salesperson performance while neglecting customers is to ignore the most important half of the relationship between buyers and sellers and entirely disregards the marketing concept and the streams of research in customer satisfaction. This research takes a different approach and examines customers’ satisfaction with salespeople.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance and extend the understanding of the underresearched concept of personal positive customer feedback (PCF). By comparing and contrasting front-line employees’ (FLEs) and customers’ perspectives, this study aims to develop a deeper understanding of the main elements, characteristics of PCF, its various impacts and the perceived importance of this phenomenon for both parties.

An exploratory research study was conducted using a novel integrated methodological approach combining two well-established qualitative techniques: structured Laddering interviews and various elements of the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique. In total, personal interviews with 40 participants consisting of 20 customers and 20 FLEs were conducted.

This study conceptualizes personal PCF in the service literature by identifying the various PCF elements and characteristics. The authors extend PCF understanding beyond what the current literature shows (i.e. gratitude, compliments) by identifying nine characteristics of PCF. This study also proposes a number of impacts on both customers and FLEs. While both customers and FLEs have a similar understanding of the various elements and characteristics of PCF, the significance of the various elements and the subsequent impacts vary between the two groups. Finally, three key themes in PCF handling that help position PCF within the extant customer management literature are identified and discussed.

This study contributes to a well-rounded understanding of customer feedback by counter-balancing the prevailing focus on customer complaining behaviour and proposing a complimentary look at the positive valence of personal feedback. It also provides managerial implications concerning the management of positive service encounters, an emerging topic within service research.

This multidisciplinary study is the first to extend the understanding of personal PCF by comparing and contrasting customers’ and FLEs’ perspectives. The findings of this study highlight the need to explore the positive side of service interactions to create positive service experiences.

Drawing from the contingency model, this study aims to investigate the moderating effects of business-to-business (B2B) buyer personal characteristics on the relationship between sales activities and sales effectiveness.

As an application of engaged scholarship, this study leverages a years’ worth of sales activity and results from a Fortune 500 financial services company for 2,710 dyads; personal characteristics (i.e. geodemographics) were appended for the customers/prospects of the dyads. The data was analyzed with hierarchical regression, and subgroups were tested using the Chow test.

The results support that geodemographic segments – as a proxy for personal characteristics – moderate the strength of the relationship between selling activities and sales effectiveness. Overall, the results demonstrate that selling activities have varying impacts on sales effectiveness within geodemographic segments and buyclass scenarios.

While it has been long held that understanding the personal characteristics of the B2B purchasing decision-maker is critical for sales effectiveness, little guidance has been provided on how to accomplish this to scale. The present study provides a framework and process for practitioner operationalization.

This research contributes to the literature that has explored personal characteristics of buying center members. Additionally, the results suggest that personal characteristics of the purchase decision-maker may transcend business-to-consumer and B2B purchasing contexts.

Given the limited empirical work investigating personal characteristics of industrial sales people as related to their reward valences and the limitation of measuring valences at a single level, previous research is extended by examining the relationships between industrial sales people′s personal characteristics and their valences for multiple levels of various rewards. A conceptual framework is presented, previous studies reviewed, hypotheses offered, the methodology explained, and the results and implications of the study discussed.

We surveyed educational leaders in a large, urban school district in the southeastern United States, examining: (1) the factor structure of scores from a new measure of administrators' preferred teacher applicant characteristics, and (2) the relationships between administrator demographics and their preferences.

We implemented a non-experimental, cross-sectional survey design using the Preferred Teacher Applicant Characteristics Survey (PTACS). We undertook descriptive and exploratory factor analyses in order to examine dimensions and underlying patterns among the 31 survey items. The retained factors served as the dependent variables in our multiple regression analyses.

We identified a four-factor structure: (1) personal, (2) professional, (3) student outcomes, and (4) demographics. Our analyses suggest that there was not meaningful variability in administrators' preferred characteristics of applicants across racial and gender variables, but revealed a significant difference between principals and assistant principals for applicant demographics.

Our findings are limited in their generalizability to the respondents from a single urban district who completed our survey in spring 2018. Although we cannot establish causation, the significant difference between principals and assistant principals for demographics may result from principals feeling greater pressure from district targets to hire diverse staff than their assistant principal counterparts. It is important to note that preferences for teacher applicant characteristics are different from actual hiring decisions and the availability of preferred characteristics.

Our study is the first large-scale use of the instrument in a large US urban school district, a context, which poses significant challenges to the education of youth as well as the hiring and retention of educators.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of salespeople’s customer orientation on the relationship between sales manager personal characteristics, fellow salespeople’s characteristics, job satisfaction and adaptive selling and salespeople’s performance in the insurance industry in Jordan.

A structured and self-administered survey was employed targeting 500 insurance salespeople working at insurance companies operating in Jordan. The final sample size was 320 salespeople representing a response rate of 64 percent. A Confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess the research constructs dimensions, unidimensionality, validity and composite reliability. Structural path analysis was also used to test the hypothesized relationships of the research model.

The empirical findings indicate that salespeople’s customer orientation fully mediates the effect of fellow salespeople’s characteristics and adaptive selling on salespeople’s performance. Sales managers’ personal characteristics have a direct effect on salespeople’s performance, contrary to job satisfaction that had no effect on salespeople’s performance.

This paper has examined only five factors that affected directly and indirectly salespeople’s performance; meanwhile other factors may affect their performance, such as salespeople experience, internal marketing and corporate image. Additionally, the fact that paper’s sample consisted only of insurance salespeople working at insurance companies limits its generalization potential to other industries.

The findings emphasize the importance of fostering good relationships among fellow salespeople’s characteristics and adaptive selling strategies. Further, sales managers’ personal characteristics directly affecting salespeople’s performance signifies the importance to hire managers with the right personal approach.

This paper represents one of the early attempts that investigate factors affecting salespeople’s performance through the mediating role of customer orientation. Accordingly, the findings shed more light into the strategic role of this construct in enhancing salespeople’s performance. Also, the paper is the first of its kind to build and examine an integrated model of salespeople’s performance in the insurance market of Jordan, which provides valuable empirical evidence concerning the drivers of salespeople’s performance in the insurance industry in Jordan.

The purpose of this study is to examine factors influencing the engagement of public school teachers in informal learning activities.

This study used a survey research design.

Analysis of the data found that teachers rely to a greater degree on interactive than on independent informal learning activities. Three environmental factors inhibit teachers from engaging in informal learning activities: lack of time, lack of proximity to colleagues' work areas, and insufficient funds. In addition, seven personal characteristics enhance teachers' motivation to engage in informal learning: initiative, self‐efficacy, love of learning, interest in the profession, commitment to professional development, a nurturing personality, and an outgoing personality.

A limitation of this study was the survey's response rate of 27.7 percent.

The findings from this study give rise to three implications for facilitating informal workplace learning. First, work areas need to be strategically designed so that employees are located near colleagues in the same technical or professional area. Second, a greater amount of unencumbered time must be built into a professional's work day. Third, access to computer technology and the internet should be provided so that professionals can communicate with others and gather information when the need to do so arises.

An important contribution of the present study to new knowledge of workplace learning is the construction of a survey instrument for assessing informal workplace learning. A second contribution is greater understanding of the personal and environmental factors that influence informal workplace learning.

The adoption and use of financial services by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are pivotal in the development of inclusive financial markets. The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of attitude on financial decision making of SMEs owner-manager. The attitude of SMEs owner-manager comprises of several factors; however, current study identifies few critical factors such as motivation, awareness and risk in the context of Pakistan. The study also includes the personal and firm characteristics as moderating variables to examine their effect on the relationship between attitude and financial decision making of owner-managers.

With the help of a structured questionnaire, total 285 valid responses are analyzed to accomplish the research objectives. The study uses SPSS and partial least square-structural equation modeling techniques in order to conduct analysis. The results of study highlight the importance of attitudinal factors such as awareness and risk. Moreover, the moderating effect of personal characteristics on the relationship between attitude and financial decision making has been found strong instead of firm characteristics.

The results show that the low awareness level of owner-managers regarding financial products and procedures significantly affects their attitude. Moreover, the less knowledge of financing terms as well as dominant role of owner-managers in taking firm decisions also increase the negative effect of risk factor on SMEs owner-manager attitude.

The study suggested that policy makers should focus on the financial awareness of SMEs owner-manager to reduce the negativity of risk factor.

The study contributes toward the literature of inclusive finance and sustainability studies through better understanding of financial decision making of SMEs in emerging economies.