Search results

Professional service firm (PSF) performance depends on the accumulation and application of specialist knowledge to find customised solutions to customer problems. However, available research has not examined whether knowledge acquired from external sources affects PSF outcomes by strengthening professionals’ beliefs rather than only by increasing technical competency. Drawing on self-efficacy theory, this study tests a model that links the quality of content acquired from external sources and the credibility of those sources to professionals’ self-efficacy and, in turn, to PSF outcomes (solution quality and firm performance). In particular, this paper aims to consider the case of professional content exchanged through professional social media.

A cross-sectional research design was applied. Data were collected from a sample of 208 accountants, auditors and lawyers who used professional social media and were analysed using covariance-based structural equation modelling.

When accessing professional content from external sources, source credibility and content quality are significant antecedents of professionals’ self-efficacy, which, in turn, has positive effects on PSF outcomes (solution quality and PSF performance).

Self-efficacy plays a key role in the link between knowledge acquired from external sources (professional content) and PSF outcomes.

This study provides recommendations and actionable insights for PSFs, professionals and other actors who create and exchange professional content. Professional associations may also take an active role by contributing and sharing credible and high-quality content, using, for example, professional social media.

This paper advances the current understanding of the effects of professionals’ access to content from external sources on PSF outcomes. It provides an explanation of these effects based on the enhancement of professionals’ beliefs instead of their technical competencies, as indicated in previous research. In addition, it is the first research effort to consider professional social media as a communication channel to exchange content that affects the self-efficacy of PSF professionals.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate psychometric properties of the Self-Efficacy for Therapeutic Use of Self (SETUS) scales, a questionnaire based on the Intentional Relationship model, and to investigate the factor structure and internal consistency of the English version of three-part SETUS questionnaire in occupational therapy students.

The sample of this cross-sectional study included 155 students with age range 18–30 years, of which 95% were women. Principal Components Analysis (PCA) was performed on the questionnaire scales, including the Self-Efficacy for Therapeutic Mode Use (SETMU), Self-Efficacy for Recognizing Interpersonal Characteristics (SERIC) and Self-Efficacy for Managing Interpersonal Events (SEMIE). The internal consistencies were calculated. Pearson correlation analysis was used to evaluate the strength of correlation among the scales.

The PCA confirmed that the items of each of the three proposed scales loaded strongly on one factor (self-efficacy for three factors of therapeutic mode use, recognizing interpersonal characteristics and managing interpersonal events). The Cronbach’s alpha for the SETMU, SERIC and SEMIE was 0.85, 0.95 and 0.96, respectively. The three scales significantly inter-correlated strongly (r ranging 0.74–0.83, all p < 0.001).

The SETUS questionnaire comprises three valid and reliable scales. It can be used by occupational therapy supervisors as a means to reflect on students’ self-efficacy in components of therapeutic use of self.

This research aims to investigate the symbiotic relationship between work and family life among doctors in India, with a focus on work–family enrichment (WFE) as a positive interplay. The study seeks to examine the impact of two aspects of WFE, namely, work-to-family enrichment (WTFE) and family-to-work enrichment (FTWE) on job satisfaction (JS) and life satisfaction (LS), while exploring the mediating role of self-efficacy (SE).

The research employs a comprehensive survey to gather data from Indian doctors. The survey includes measures of WTFE, FTWE, JS, LS and SE. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to examine the proposed connections among the research constructs, using IBM AMOS v.23.

The findings reveal that WTFE significantly impacts both JS and LS. However, FTWE does not show a direct influence on JS, though it does positively impact LS. SE plays a noteworthy role, having a strong direct influence on both job and life satisfaction. In terms of indirect influence, WTFE impacts job and life satisfaction through the mechanism of SE. Nevertheless, no significant indirect effect was found between FTWE and both types of satisfaction through SE.

This research presents several original contributions to the study of work–life balance among healthcare professionals. Firstly, its unique geographic focus on North India distinguishes it from existing literature, offering fresh insights into the experiences of doctors in this region. Moreover, the study's multifaceted examination of WFE, SE, JS, and LS introduces a comprehensive perspective seldom seen in current research.

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of interaction in supporting value co-creation during pre-purchase customer journey stages when selling professional B-to-B services. First, value co-creation in professional service firms (PSFs) is reviewed, and, second, the role of interaction in the different stages of a customer’s pre-purchase journey is explored, specifically in the context of B-to-B human resource management services.

Qualitative, semi-structured interview data was collected from potential B2B customers of a PSF in question, providing a broad coverage of prospective clients in architecture, engineering and IT sector.

In general, the findings of this study indicate that interaction plays a crucial role in pre-purchasing stages of a customer journey. In particular, these findings form understanding of how various interaction channels and content support PSF’s ability to co-create value with its prospects.

The existing research tends to concentrate on how value is created for existing customers, and far less attention has been paid to the perspective of prospects. This study contributes theoretically by providing novel insights into the current literature on value co-creation in PSFs by providing an understanding of how interactions in pre-purchase phases affect the co-creation of value from the perspective of prospects, which is a less researched viewpoint. Empirically, this study offers managers much-needed, context-specific knowledge of PSFs by comparing differences and pulling together similarities from each customer journey stage of PSF prospects.

Despite the considerable increase in research on entrepreneurship education, few studies examine the role of entrepreneurship educators. Similarly, most frameworks from entrepreneurship education recognize the educator’s importance in facilitating instruction and assessment, but the factors influencing the educator role are not well understood. According to the identity theory, personal factors including self-efficacy, job satisfaction and personal values influence the perspective of self, significance and anticipations that an individual in this role associates with it, determining their planning and actions. The stronger the role identity the more likely entrepreneurship educators will be in effectively developing their entrepreneurial skills as well as the overall learning experience of their students. The objective of this study is to pinpoint the factors that affect entrepreneurial role identity.

Drawing upon the identity theory, this study developed a theoretical framework and carried out an empirical investigation involving a survey of 289 entrepreneurship educators across the globe. Structural equation modeling (SEM) technique was applied to analyze and explore the factors that impact the identity of the educators in their role as entrepreneurship teachers.

The findings show that the role identity of entrepreneurship educators is significantly influenced by their self-efficacy, job satisfaction and personal values. Among these factors, self-efficacy and job satisfaction have the most significant impacts on how educators perceive their role. The implications of these results and directions for future research are also discussed.

The novelty of the current study is derived from its conceptualization of the antecedents of role perception among entrepreneurship educators. This study stands out as one of the earliest attempts to investigate the factors that shape an individual’s scene of self and professional identity as an entrepreneurship educator. The significance of comprehending the antecedents of role perception lies in the insights it can offer into how educators undertake and execute their role, and consequently, their effectiveness in teaching entrepreneurship.

Self-efficacy, or a person’s belief in his/her ability to perform specific tasks, has been correlated with workplace performance and role adjustments. Despite its relevance, and numerous studies of it in the management literature, evidence regarding its function in professionals employed in hybrid roles, such as doctor-managers, is lacking. The aim of this study was to fill this gap by exploring the mediating effect of physicians’ managerial attitude on the relationship between their self-efficacy and workplace performance.

Primary and secondary data from 126 doctor-managers were obtained from the Italian National Health Service. A structural equation modeling approach was used for analysis.

This study’s results provide for the first time empirical evidence about a surprisingly little-analyzed topic: how physicians’ managerial attitude mediates the relationship between their self-efficacy and workplace performance. The study offers important evidence both for scholars and organizations.

This study’s results provide valuable input for the human resources management of hybrid roles in professional-based organizations, suggesting a systematic provision of feedback about doctor-managers’ performance, the adoption of a competence approach for their recruitment, and a new design of doctor-managers’ career paths.

The authors provide new evidence about the importance of managerial traits for accountable healthcare organizations, documenting that behavioral traits of physicians enrolled into managerial roles matter for healthcare organizations success.

This study examined the impact of school leadership on teacher professional collaboration, with collective teacher innovativeness and teacher self-efficacy (TSE) playing the mediating role. Two most commonly used leadership styles, instructional leadership (IL) and distributed leadership (DL), were analyzed using a multilevel design, i.e. teachers are nested within schools.

The proposed model was validated using data of Taiwan TALIS 2018 collected from both teachers and principals and analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling.

Results showed that IL and DL influence teacher professional collaboration through different paths. IL had a significant direct impact on teacher professional collaboration alone, while DL had a significant direct impact on both teachers' collective innovativeness and their professional collaboration. While TSE had a direct effect on collective teacher innovativeness, TSE and collective teacher innovativeness had a direct effect on teacher professional collaboration.

This study highlights the significant impact of principal leadership as both principals and teachers work in the same environment and culture co-shaped through the interaction and collaboration. Research evidence regarding the effects of IL and DL on teacher professional collaboration is limited; this is even less evidential when the indirect effects of variables mediating between school leadership and teacher outcomes, including teacher collective innovativeness and TSE, are added to the total effects. The present findings provide useful references for principals and teachers when promoting professional collaboration to achieve desired outcomes in school and student improvement.

The purpose of this paper is to explore effects of an intervention designed for teachers' learning. This study investigates the effectiveness of a three-session professional development (PD) program based on the lesson study methodology. Lesson study was chosen as an intervention, attempting to strengthen teachers' awareness of and readiness to teach for student diversity.

This study included 26 participants. The teachers took part in lesson study cycles during a period of four months. Effectiveness was measured using a pre-test/post-test within-subject design. The broad concept of inclusion and the characteristics of the research questions in this study demanded a mix of methods, a design in which qualitative and quantitative data are collected in parallel, analyzed separately and then merged.

Results show an increase of teachers' readiness from baseline to post measurement to adjust the learning environment for increased inclusivity. The largest increase (88%) was seen in the themes in teachers' responses regarding accommodations for a student with special needs. Regarding self-perceived ability, the average increase was 50%. Results show significant changes in teachers' adjustment awareness ability.

This study contributes to educational research, as the focus is PD for general teachers. PD opportunities with teaching strategies related to special needs (e.g. neurodevelopmental conditions, NDCs) are seldom offered to general education teachers. Support from teachers is a key strategy for accommodating students with special needs in mainstream classrooms. Furthermore, there is a lack of literature of interventions aiming to improve teachers' readiness and preparedness for students with NDCs in mainstream settings.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss relationships between high-performance work systems (HPWSs) and productive/counterproductive behaviours initiated and performed by employees. Using the ability, motivation and opportunities (AMO) theoretical framework, the authors described how an HPWS influences employee behaviours. The authors suggest that HPWSs could increase productive work behaviour and decrease counterproductive behaviours by mediating employees' affective commitment and moderating their self-efficacy.

This study is based on data from 563 questionnaires, which were completed using the computer-assisted telephone interview method. The respondents were knowledge workers, representing companies of various sizes in the Knowledge-Intensive Business Service (KIBS) sector in Poland. Statistical verification of the mediation and moderation analyses was conducted with macro PROCESS (ver. 3.3).

This research confirmed a significant statistical relationship between all examined variables. It has been shown that HPWSs influence productive and counterproductive behaviours both directly and indirectly through mediation of affective commitment. The statistical analysis also confirmed the study’s hypothesis that self-efficacy moderates relationships between an HPWS and employee behaviours.

This study has two limitations: its cross-sectional design and the use of self-reported questionnaire data.

This study is the first to explore mediating mechanisms between HPWSs and employee performance in the context of the KIBS companies in Poland. The results indicate that HPWSs are important antecedents of productive and counterproductive behaviours among knowledge workers.

Psychological and entrepreneurial traits have been widely studied as explicative variables of encouraging entrepreneurial behavior, while their impact on innovative activity is less explored. This study examines whether, how and why psycho-entrepreneurial traits and social networks effect innovativeness among women firm owners.

Analysis of data collected from 304 Saudi women entrepreneurs accompanied by business accelerators provides a wide support with some notable exceptions. We use Structural Equation Modeling technique to estimate how different constructs interact with each other and jointly affect directly or indirectly women's innovativeness behavior in Saudi Arabia.

Findings point out that innovativeness is positively and significantly affected by emotional intelligence, internal locus of control, entrepreneurial alertness and entrepreneurial self-efficacy. The construct of entrepreneurial self-efficacy mediates the relationship between both business and personal networks and innovativeness. However, professional forums and mentors have no significant effect on innovativeness.

The sample selection is limited to two entrepreneurial support structures especially business accelerator and business incubator. Expanding the context to other support structures can reinforce the implications and provide more valuable results.

The findings are likely to be of applicability for improving women entrepreneurship by entrepreneurial support structures.

This research is original in the sense that it investigated useful insights of innovativeness among Saudi female entrepreneurs.