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This study aims to examine the impact of the regulatory focus of the top management team (TMT) members on the technological diversification of firms in high-technology industries based on the upper echelons theory and regulatory focus theory and explore the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty.

This paper uses data on the Chinese Growth Enterprises Market Board (GEM)-listed companies from 2012 to 2016. The authors collected data on TMT regulatory focus from firms’ annual reports by Python programming. A fixed-effects model was used to test our hypotheses.

Results indicate that TMTs with a high promotion focus are associated with greater technological diversification, while TMTs with a high prevention focus are linked to lower technological diversification. Moreover, environmental uncertainty amplifies the positive relationship between promotion-focused TMTs and technological diversification, while it diminishes the negative relationship between prevention-focused TMTs and technological diversification.

This study is limited to high-technology firms listed on the Chinese GEM, which may restrict the generalizability of the findings. Future research could validate these results in different countries and industries to enhance their robustness. Additionally, this study focuses on the impact of TMT regulatory focus on technological diversification; future studies could explore its influence on other strategic decisions, such as digital transformation or innovation strategies.

The results suggest that firms should carefully consider the regulatory focus of their TMT when making strategic decisions regarding technological diversification. Boards of directors should ensure that the TMT’s regulatory focus aligns with the firm’s strategic objectives, particularly in high-technology industries. Moreover, firms should adapt their strategies to the level of environmental uncertainty to better navigate the risks and opportunities presented by a dynamic market environment.

Supportive evidence allows authors to discuss how our findings contribute to the upper echelons theory, as well as the emerging stream of firm technological diversification, which provided valuable psychological insights into the factors influencing TMT strategic decision-making. Meanwhile, this paper integrates the factors of the industry macro-environment to explore the changes in the TMT regulatory focus on firm technological diversification under different contexts.

Existing research on innovation has mainly focused on how to promote technological innovation in megaprojects and management innovation (MI) in megaprojects is still an unknown research field. The purposes of this study are to examine the effect of MI on megaproject performance and how the top management team (TMT) regulatory focus affects the use of MI in projects. At the same time, the moderating effects of project uncertainties are also tested.

On the basis of an explorative/exploitative ambidextrous analysis framework, this study divides MI into two dimensions: explorative and exploitative MI, and integrates the theoretical perspectives of the TMT regulatory focus and project uncertainties into a research model. Taking 314 responses from megaprojects’ TMTs in China as research data, this study empirically tests the above model.

Results show that exploratory MI has a U-shaped relationship with megaproject performance; whereas exploitative MI has an inverted U-shaped relationship with megaproject performance. The TMT promotion focus has a positive effect on exploratory and exploitative MI; and the TMT prevention focus has a negative effect on exploratory MI but has a positive effect on exploitative MI. Project uncertainties have a positive moderating effect on the positive relationship between TMT promotion focus and exploratory MI, whereas it has a negative moderating effect on the negative relationship between the TMT prevention focus and exploratory MI.

By empirically measuring the relationship between two types of MIs and megaproject performance, this study clarifies the differential mechanism of the effect of different MIs on megaproject performance. This study also examines the MI of megaprojects from the perspective of the TMT regulatory focus and expounds how changes in uncertainties affect the relationship between the TMT regulatory focus and MI.

This research objective is to (1) examine the effect of organizational factors on quality performance, (2) examine the effect of quality performance on competitive advantage and (3) examine the mediating role of quality performance between organizational factors and competitive advantage.

The research sample includes 140 employees in the Windusari village-owned enterprise, in Magelang, Indonesia. Data are collected using 5-Likert scale questionnaires which follow Ferdousi et al. (2019). The dependent variable is a competitive advantage. The Independent variable is organizational factors which are top management support, employee empowerment, employee involvement, reward and recognition, training and customer focus. The mediating variable is quality performance. Data analysis uses path analysis provided by structural equation modeling.

Based on path analysis, organizational factors have a positive effect on quality performance, quality performance has a positive effect on competitive advantage and quality performance mediates the effect of organizational factors on competitive advantage. The results confirm the concept of quality management where continuous improvement of products and services can meet customer expectations and bring the organization to a better position in the industry to face other competitors.

This research extends the previous studies of the relationship between organizational factors and organizational outcomes by considering the effectiveness of the organizational process. This research also contributes to giving new evidence about the relationship between organizational factors, quality management and competitive advantage in the village-owned enterprise in Magelang, Indonesia. This research also contributes to updating the literature on the theory of quality management.

The primary aim of this study is to delve into the causes of occupational stress and burnout amongst administrative staff members in Pakistani universities. It does so by employing a qualitative research strategy, offering a comprehensive understanding of the issue.

This study uses a qualitative research strategy to examine the causes of occupational stress and burnout amongst administrative staff members in Pakistani universities. Around 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted via Teams with administrative employees in renowned universities in Rawalpindi, Islamabad and the Lahore region of Pakistan. Saldana's (2014) structured inductive data analysis method was used to analyse the collected data.

The study sheds light on the harsh realities faced by university administrative staff in Pakistani universities. These include top management ineffectiveness, role ambiguity, role conflict, favouritism, inequality, a communication gap with higher authorities, disparity of rewards and recognition, no career paths and opportunities, feeble leadership, corruption, inappropriate use of power, mishandling of qualified staff and non-acceptance of shifting roles from administration to academia. These are not just academic concepts but real-life challenges that demand immediate attention.

The study's findings have significant implications for Pakistan's Ministry of Education. Based on these findings, the recommendations proposed can serve as a roadmap for enhancing interpersonal development, implementing career development programmes, succession planning and supporting university administrative staff. These initiatives can lay the groundwork for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goal-4 targets, making this research a valuable resource for policymakers.

This study aims to address the question of why managers make different decisions in employee downsizing when their firms face external threats. Our research intends to shed light on whether and how CEOs' cognition (motivational attributes associated with regulatory focus) influences their decision-making and firms’ strategic actions on downsizing under high resource scarcity in the industry environment.

We used a longitudinal panel of 5,544 firm-year observations of US firms from 2003 to 2015 to test our conceptual model. The data was obtained from various sources, including corporate earnings call transcripts and archival databases. We used panel logistic regressions with both fixed and random effects in our research design.

Our results suggest that CEOs' motivational attributes could influence their employee downsizing decisions in response to external threats. We find that CEOs who are more promotion-focused (a stronger drive towards achieving ideals) are less likely to lay off employees during high resource scarcity. Conversely, CEOs with a higher prevention focus (a greater concern for security) do not have a meaningful impact on employee downsizing during periods of external resource scarcity.

Previous research has argued that a significant external threat would diminish individuals' impact on firm strategies and outcomes. Our findings challenge this idea, indicating that CEOs with a stronger drive towards achieving ideals are less inclined to lay off employees when resources are scarce in the environment. This study contributes to behavioral strategy research by providing new insights into how upper echelons’ cognition can influence their decision-making and firms’ employee downsizing.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the roles of employee experience and top management commitment in the relationship between human resource (HR) records management culture and HR records privacy control in organisations in Ghana.

Structural equation modelling was used in analysing the data. Following the specification of the model, three main types of analyses were carried out. They were reflective measurement model analyses to test reliability and validity; formative measurement model analyses to test redundancy, collinearity, significance and relevance of the lower-order constructs; and structural model analyses to ascertain the explanatory and predictive powers of the model, significance of the hypotheses and their effect sizes.

The study confirmed that communication, privacy awareness and training and risk assessment are dimensions of HR records management culture. Concerning the hypotheses, it was established that HR records management culture is related to HR records privacy control. Also, the study showed that employee experience positively moderated the relationship HR records management culture has with HR records privacy control. However, top management commitment negatively moderated the relationship HR records management culture has with HR records privacy control.

Organisations committed to the privacy control of HR records need to ensure the retention of their employees, as the longer they stay with the organisation, the more they embody the HR records management culture which improves the privacy control of HR records. For top management commitment, it should be restricted to providing strategic direction for HR records privacy control, as the day-to-day influence of top management commitment on the HR records management culture does not improve the privacy control of HR records.

This study demonstrates that communication, privacy awareness and training and risk assessment are dimensions of HR record management culture. Also, the extent of employee experience and top management commitment required in the relationship between HR records management culture and HR records privacy control is revealed.

The purpose of this study is to scrutinize the connection between creativity and innovation in the context of public healthcare. This is achieved by applying the theoretical concept of employee-driven innovation (EDI) to explore employees’ perceptions of their creative engagement in innovation processes, as well as to capture the managerial implications of setting up such processes in the sector.

A critical discourse analysis (CDA) is applied as a methodological lens to capture the interaction between the macro-level production and meso-level distribution of innovation discourse (top-down), and the micro-level perception of, and response to, the same (bottom-up). This study is based on a qualitative approach and is set in the public healthcare system of the Autonomous Province of Trento, Northeast Italy. In total, 26 semi-structured interviews were conducted with 22 healthcare professionals. For triangulation purposes, observation and document analysis were also performed.

The findings of this study reveal that tensions are present between the macro-level discourses and the meso-level strategies around innovation, and the micro-level perceptions of employees’ creative engagement in innovation processes. Healthcare professionals’ creative efforts are not easily recognized and supported by top management, which in turn does not receive a framework of reference in policies acknowledging the importance of human skills and creativity in innovation processes.

That this is a single case study implies a limitation on the generalizability of its results, but the results may nevertheless be transferable to similar empirical contexts. Therefore, a multiple case study design would be preferable in future studies in order to study EDI strategies and policies across various types of organizations in the public sector. Moreover, apart from CDA, other theoretical and methodological lenses can be applied to investigate the interaction between top-down organizing and bottom-up responses to innovation.

This study contributes to the EDI literature by providing a more integrative understanding of EDI in the public sector, demonstrating the importance of scrutinizing the interactions between employees and top-level management.

Although it is commonly agreed that prescriptive analytics can benefit organizations by enabling better decision-making, the deployment of prescriptive analytics tools can be challenging. Previous studies have primarily focused on methodological issues rather than the organizational deployment of analytics. However, successful deployment is key to achieving the intended benefits of prescriptive analytics tools. Therefore, this study aims to identify the enablers of successful deployment of prescriptive analytics.

The authors examine the enablers for the successful deployment of prescriptive analytics through five organizational case studies. To provide a comprehensive view of the deployment process, each case includes interviews with users, managers and top management.

The findings suggest the key enablers for successful analytics deployment are strong leadership and management support, sufficient resources, user participation in development and a common dialogue between users, managers and top management. However, contrary to the existing literature, the authors found little evidence of external pressures to develop and deploy analytics. Importantly, the success of deployment in each case was related to the similarity with which different actors within the organization viewed the deployment process. Furthermore, end users tended to highlight user participation, skills and training, whereas managers and top management placed greater emphasis on the importance of organizational changes.

The results will help practitioners ensure that key enablers are in place to increase the likelihood of the successful deployment of prescriptive analytics.

This study aims to use the knowledge management perspective to examine the mechanism through which entrepreneurship drives firms’ technological innovation in the digital age. The objective is to develop a multi-stage integrated theoretical model to explain how entrepreneurship exerts its influence on firms’ technological innovation with a particular focus on the knowledge management perspective. The findings can be used for the cultivation of entrepreneurship and for the promotion of continuous technological innovation activities.

This study uses a case-based qualitative approach to examine the relationship between entrepreneurship and technological innovation. The authors first analyze the case of SANY and then explore the mechanism of how entrepreneurship can promote a firm’s technological innovation from the perspective of knowledge management based on the technology-organization-environment framework. An integrated theoretical model is then developed in this study.

Based on a case study, the authors propose that there are three main processes of knowledge management in firms’ technological innovation: knowledge acquisition, knowledge integration and knowledge creation. In the process of knowledge acquisition, the joint effects of innovation spirit, learning spirit, cooperation spirit and global vision drive the construction and its healthy development of firms’ innovation ecosystem. In the process of knowledge integration, the joint effects of innovation spirit, cooperation spirit and learning spirit help complete the integration of knowledge and further the accumulation of firms’ core knowledge resources. In the process of knowledge creation, the joint effects of mission spirit, learning spirit and innovation spirit encourage the top management team to establish long-term goals and innovation philosophy. This philosophy can promote the establishment of a people-oriented incentive mechanism that helps achieve the transformation from the accumulation of core knowledge resources to the research and innovation of core technologies. After these three stages, firms are passively engaged in the “reverse transfer of knowledge” step, which contributes to other firms’ knowledge management cycle. With active knowledge acquisition, integration, creation and passive reverse knowledge transfer, firms can achieve continuous technological innovation.

This study has important theoretical implications in entrepreneurship research. This study helps advance the understanding of entrepreneurship and literature on the relationship between entrepreneurship and technological innovation in the digital age, which can broaden the application of knowledge management theories. It can also help better understand how to develop healthy firm-led innovation ecosystems to achieve continuous optimization of knowledge and technological innovation in the digital age.

This study proposes an integrated theoretical model to address the issues of entrepreneurship and firms’ technological innovation in the digital age, and it is also one of few studies that focuses on entrepreneurship and innovation from a knowledge management perspective.

This study aims to investigate the factors influencing the social responsibility performance of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) megaprojects. Specifically, it examines the role of isomorphic pressures and the joint influence of perceived benefits and top management support on megaproject social responsibility performance (MSRP).

Drawing from institutional theory, social exchange theory, and top management literature, this study established a conceptual model featuring eleven hypotheses. Subsequently, a questionnaire survey was administered to collect data from 238 actively engaged participants in BRI megaprojects. Structural Equation Modelling was utilised to analyse the data.

The empirical findings indicate that mimetic and coercive pressures positively influence MSRP. Perceived benefits and top management support significantly enhance MSRP. Moreover, perceived benefits and top management support partially mediate the effects of coercive and mimetic pressures. However, when it comes to normative pressures, their impact on MSRP is solely channelled through the support of top management.

This study is one of the early endeavours to explore the factors influencing the social responsibility performance of BRI megaprojects. It sheds light on the interplay between external pressures and internal factors in shaping social responsibility efforts in these projects. These findings are of particular significance for BRI actors and stakeholders, offering guidance for enhancing social responsibility strategies within the context of BRI megaprojects.