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The cordiality of the relationship between home owners and house developers is significant in the house building sector. This plays a key role in meeting needs, expectations and overall satisfaction. Home owners’ satisfactions are very often dependent on their encounters and experiences with the building organisations they deal with. The purpose of this paper is to explore home owners’ satisfaction to the quality of their new homes by investigating the relationships between them and their house developers when they take possession of their properties.

Two distinct lines of investigation were conducted, with the first utilising mail questionnaires administered to new home owners. The second involved interviews with house building developers. Both investigations cover five main regions in New Zealand. However, this study reports the mail questionnaire survey. The data analysis is based on 216 new home owners, and the results presented using descriptive and correlation analysis.

This research found that the higher the home owner’s satisfaction with the services provided by the developers, the better the relationship that could exist between them. In addition, the longer it takes for developers to rectify defects that are reported by home owners, the lesser the cordiality of their relationship with their developers. It is also evident from this study that home owners’ relationships with their house developers could be sensitive to the extent of defects in their homes. While it is apparent from this research that new home owners satisfaction level is high, some improvement opportunities exist, which the study highlights for continuous performance improvement. This will enable the residential construction sector to establish more aggressive and pro-active measures of monitoring to the satisfaction of home owners.

This research provides insight into significant factors that could influence the relationship between home owners and their house developers. The study provides information on changes required in the quality culture that could enable house developers do it once and do it right.

The originality of this research lies in the provision of a wealth of information on cordiality as a key determinant of home owners and house developers’ relationships. This will enable house developers to set realistic performance standards and focus efforts where they are most needed so that home owners derive satisfaction from the quality of service offered by them.

Contemporary sales scholarship suggests that salespersons pursuing customer satisfaction should improvise (think and act on their feet) to find solutions to customers’ emergent problems. A missing link in this literature, however, is the relational context within which improvisation takes place and becomes effective. This study aims to examine how the tone of the salesperson–customer relationship (whether cordial or coercive) drives and conditions salesperson improvisation and its implications for customer satisfaction.

The study tests the proposed model using dyadic salesperson–customer data from business-to-business (B2B) markets in Ghana. The relationships are tested using structural equation modeling technique.

The study finds that salesperson improvisation is associated with customer satisfaction. It also finds the extent of cordiality between salespersons and their customers predicts but does not enhance the value of improvisation for customer satisfaction. The reverse is true for customer exercised coercive power which is not a significant driver of improvisation but can substantially alter its benefits for the worse.

By implication, salespersons should improvise more to be able to satisfy customers. However, such improvisation must be tempered with a consciousness of the relationship shared with customers and the level of power they exercise in the relationship.

Because improvised behavior deviates from routines and may be unsettling for customers, improvising salespersons must first understand whether their customers would be willing to accommodate such deviations. Yet, the literature is silent on this relational context surrounding improvisation. This study, by exploring facilitating and inhibitory relational variables implicated in improvisation, addresses this gap.

Using projects executed with both traditional and integrated procurement methods, the study sought to investigate relationships that exist among project participants and the influence of those relationships on cost growth. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Questionnaires were administered among 274 construction projects located in 12 states including the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria. Responses were obtained from 96 projects. Data were subjected to both descriptive and inferential analyses.

In terms of cordiality, relationships between client and contractors ranked highest, while those among in-house project teams ranked lowest. Cost growth or cost overrun is significantly correlated with client-contractor relationship, consultant-contractor relationship, client-consultant-contractor relationship and in-house team relationships. No association between procurement method and cost growth was found.

The limitation of generalizability of results due to the sampling method used is acknowledged. One implication of the findings is that in the context of this research, any explanation for cost growth has to be found outside procurement methods.

Findings may assist project participants on variables to consider in anticipating, preventing or managing cost growth in building construction projects, beyond formularization of contracts and structures.

The research has uniquely investigated the association between intangible project team relationships and tangible variable of cost growth.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how differences in the institutional environments of a multinational enterprise (MNE) shape the role of management control systems (MCSs) and social capital in the headquarter (HQ)-subsidiary relationship of an emerging economy MNE.

A case study design was adopted in this research in order to understand how the differences in the institutional environments of an MNE shape the design and use of MCSs. Data were gathered by means of semi-structured interviews, document analysis and observations. Interviews were conducted at the Nigerian HQ and UK subsidiary of the Nigerian Service Multinational Enterprise (NSMNE).

The study found that the subsidiary operated autonomously, given its residence in a stronger institutional environment than the HQ. Instead of the HQ depending on MCSs means of coordination and control, it relied on social capital that existed between the HQ and subsidiary to coordinate and integrate the operation of the foreign subsidiary studied.

The evidence from this research indicates that social capital could be effective in the integration and coordination of multinational operations. However, where social capital becomes the main mechanism of coordination and integration of HQ-subsidiary operations, the focus may have to be, as in this case, on organisational social capital and the need to achieve group goals, rather than specifically designated target goals for the subsidiary. The implication of this is that it may limit the potential of the subsidiary to explore its environment and search for opportunities. These are important insights into the relationship between developed country-based subsidiaries and their less developed countries-based HQs.

A practical implication of this research is in the use of local or expatriate staff to manage the operation of the subsidiary. While previous studies on the MNE, from the conventional perspective of multinational operation, suggest that expatriates may be sent to the subsidiary to head key positions so as to enable the HQ to have control of the subsidiary operation, it is different in this case. The NSMNE has adopted a policy of using locals who have the expertise and understanding of the UK institutional environment to manage the subsidiary’s operation.

This research sheds some light on how development issues associated with a multinational institutional environment may shape the business activities and the relationship between the HQ and subsidiary. It gives some understanding of how policies and practices may have different impacts on employees as businesses attempt to adjust to pressures from their external environment(s).

The reliance on social capital as a means of coordination and control of the foreign subsidiary in this study is significant, given that previous studies have indicated that multinational HQs normally transfer controls and structure to foreign subsidiaries as a means of control. Also, while previous studies have suggested that MNEs HQ have better expertise that enables them to design and transfer MCSs to foreign subsidiaries, this study found that such expertise relates to the institutional environment from which the HQ is operating from. Through the lens of institutional sociology theory, these findings directly contribute to the literature on the transference of practices and control systems in international business discourse.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical investigation into the mediating effect of high-performance work systems (HPWS) on health harm (HH). The paper also examines the role of perceived organizational support (POS) and its indirect effect on work intensification (WI) and HH through HPWS. Further, the implications of the HH on individuals, organizations, families and societies are also presented. Recognizing the need for sustainable human resource management (HRM) practices that drive employee well-being and reducing HH is also highlighted.

Data for the study were collected using four established scales. The data collected from 345 executives were analyzed using the SPSS 25.0 Version and Amos 21.0.

The study confirmed that work intensification causes HH. The results also indicate the significant mediation of HPWS and the moderation of POS between WI and HH, thus suggesting the inevitability of HR intervention for implementing sustainable HRM practices, which reduce the negative harm of the work.

Data were collected from executives working in IT organizations in India. However, IT work exhibits broadly similar technology/platforms across the world and hence, applicable to the other contexts as well.

The study suggests that organizations should formulate policies and initiate interventions toward the care of employees, motivating toward higher performance and support them to prevent HH of work. It is difficult to categorize what comprises the care of employees in the current context of HPWS and treating employees as an end in itself. Generally, it is seen in terms of health and safety, work–life balance, remuneration, workload, job role and job design. People are core to sustainable development, and the HR must design and develop systems so that the organization can retain a healthy and productive workforce from a sustainability perspective. Moreover, sustainable work performance is a function of high resource levels of employees (energy, time and competences) and the allocation of resources, leading to resource regeneration. Hence, organizations need to source from a variety of sources and balance it for the sustainable performance of employees.

The HRM literature reveals the positive effect of POS on employee health, but studies that investigated the adverse impact of POS are notably absent. The study bridges this gap and is novel, as it explores the moderating role of POS on HPWS and HH and reaffirms the need for building sustainable organizations and sustainable HRM practices. Moreover, the paper provides contextual support to the literature, where studies relating to sustainable HRM practices in developing countries like India are absent.

Literature has long been discussing indigenous forms of informal practices whose cultural origins are concealed. We first seek to provide a contextualization of the importance of an informal practice that is salient within the Brazilian culture – the Brazilian jeitinho. We then provide a historical background of the jeitinho, as well as an attempt to come up with a definition of the construct, which is by no means a definitive one. We explore how the jeitinho plays a role in the Brazilian organizational scenario, which may be useful for international companies aiming to do business in the country. Finally, we present a set of recommendations as how to deal with jeitinho in organizational-related occasions, drawing on the Brazilian historian Sérgio Buarque de Holanda's “cordial man” concept, which suggests that the roots of Brazilian culture lie in the patriarchal environment of the colonial period. We do not have in this chapter the intention of characterizing the multiplicity of Brazilian business practices, what would be an impossible task to accomplish in light of the enormous diversity of social contexts in Brazil. What we present in the chapter are some concepts and tools for working with and, fundamentally, understanding the organizational and social process the Brazilian context, which we hope may be useful for those interested in doing business in or with Brazil.

Purpose – This paper reports on the results of a case study that investigates the operations of formal and informal controls in a multinational-subsidiary in Nigeria.

Design/methodology – Data has been gathered by way of semi-structured interviews, observation, document analyses and a focus group discussion.

Findings – Findings suggest that although issues relating to budgets, performance evaluation and rewards, staff recruitment and other formal aspects of controls were built on the platform of formality, these systems operated alongside informal controls in the organization. We suggest that beliefs systems, values and norms existing within the local community where the subsidiary is located could have a controlling effect and influence the formal organizational controls. Forms of informal controls such as trust were found to be prominent in the organization where superiors in certain instances assigned responsibilities to members of their teams not on the basis of their abilities or skills possessed by the member but because the member could be trusted.

Implications – The findings as reported here have significant implications for understanding the design of management controls in less developed countries (LDCs).

The extra-low minimum wage for US restaurant workers has remained unchanged for over 30 years. Periodic campaigns have brought this wage, and its connection to the perpetuation of inequality and exploitative work, to public attention, but these campaigns have met resistance from both employers and restaurant workers. This article draws on a workplace ethnography in a restaurant front-of-house, and in-depth interviews with tipped food service workers, to examine the tipped labour process and begin to answer a central question: why would any workers oppose a wage increase? It argues that the constituting of tips as a formal wage created for workers a two-employer problem, wherein customers assume the role of secondary, unregulated, employers in the workplace. Ultimately, the tipped wage poses a longer-term strategic obstacle for workers in their position relative to management and ability to organize to shape the terms and conditions of their work.

Purpose: The chapter aims to discuss the importance of economic development tourism in the United Arab Emirates and the role of entrepreneurship in financial growth, as it is an important aspect in the business environment of tourism. Having said that, the UAE has made remarkable progress in sustaining its economic growth and tourism development over the past decades.

Methodology: To review the importance of the economic development tourism in the United Arab Emirates and the role of entrepreneurship in financial growth, the authors have explored journals from the Scopus, Science direct, Google scholar, and EBSCOHost databases. Furthermore, the Latest reports from UNO and UAE are also examined to find the tourism statistics of past years.

Findings: This study explored the contribution of the tourism industry in enhancing the economic development of the country. This chapter highlighted the past and current trends in tourism in the UAE. Entrepreneurship is considered to be one of the major important outcomes of increased tourism in the country. UAE has also focused on every subject linked to tourism. Furthermore, the country has noted entrepreneurship as a driving factor for tourism. Therefore, various steps have been taken to encourage tourism and entrepreneurship, such as developing infrastructure, along with the implementation of tourism and entrepreneurial education.

Limitations: Like other research studies, this study also has some limitations. The latest reports available were of 2017 to 2019; therefore, current year trends are not explored extensively. Also, due to the scarcity of literature on entrepreneurial tourism in the UAE, this study has reviewed limited articles from UAE.

Social Implications: A more “integrative destination-marketing” process should be promoted with a concerted focus on social identity, cultural sustainability, and religiosity. The overall objective would, therefore, be to develop positive perceptions of destinations such as Dubai that are consistent with its Islamic roots, indigenous peoples, and social and cultural bases.

Originality: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this chapter is one of its own kind. There are no similar studies have been conducted in the context of the UAE. This study has opened the gates for future research in the tourism sector in UAE.