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The purpose of this paper is to examine why and when followers of transformational leaders exhibit increased affective organizational commitment. Particularly, the authors examined the role played by perceived organizational support (POS) and supervisor’s organizational embodiment (SOE), i.e. a perception concerning the extent to which employees identify their supervisor with the organization, in this relationship.

In total, 287 employees of a water producer organization responded to a questionnaire.

The results show that, when employees strongly identify their supervisor with the organization, transformational leadership is positively related to POS, with positive consequences in terms of emotional attachment to this organization. In contrast, when the supervisor is not identified to the organization, his/her transformational leadership does not extend to POS and, finally, to affective organizational commitment.

The findings suggest that a high transformational leadership and a high SOE together engender the highest POS and affective commitment. Organizations should thus provide their managers with training programs and feedbacks over their performance as leaders to promote transformational leadership. Furthermore, to foster perceptions of SOE, organizations might implement socialization tactics aiming to strengthen managers’ organizational identification or person-organization fit, and give managers more power and influence in their day-to-day work to increase employees’ attributions of informal organizational status to managers.

By showing that POS and SOE are important mechanisms in the transformational leadership-affective commitment relationship, this research explains why and when transformational leadership of supervisors has spillover effect on organization-directed attitudes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine Chinese employees' perceptions on their ethical decision making in relation to the workplace guanxi context in state‐owned enterprises (SOE).

Using a qualitative method, two rounds of interviews were conducted with 18 participants in two SOEs “to explore Chinese employees” ethical perceptions and experiences in the workplace. A qualitative thematic strategy was adopted to analyze and interpret the data.

The authors identified three major themes on SOE employees ethical decision making in relation to workplace guanxi: the ethical self; malleable ethical standards; and submission to authority. The authors derived a conceptual framework to outline the relationship between the invisible hand of guanxi and the SOE employees' ethical decision making.

The paper contributes to the business ethics literature by presenting a three‐dimensional profile and a conceptual framework for Chinese business ethics research. It provides an in‐depth understanding of a complex dynamics of guanxi and its impact on employees' ethical decision‐making behavior.

This study aims to investigate measures established to ensure board of directors (BODs) in a state-owned enterprise (SOE) meets the organization for economic cooperation and development (OECD, 2015) guidelines criteria: how they perform their advising and control roles, and interactions within the boardroom using agency theory and OECD guidelines.

This research adopts a qualitative approach of a board within a SOE in Barbados involving several stages of data collection. A case study approach was used involving interviews of nine board members and seven key management staff, analysis of board minutes and annual reports.

BODs follow majority of the OECD (2015) guidelines for good governance. The Chairman allowed full discussion and input from BODs. The board members’ diverse qualifications and skills added value to the organization. However, appointments to the board were heavily slanted toward political considerations which at times may have skewed judgments. Boardroom interactions reflected quality contributions from the BODs. Decision-making was lengthy and tedious. Boardroom atmosphere could be territorial.

Political interference remains an issue facing BODs in executing their roles. This study did not observe board meetings but perceived views via the lens of BODs and management.

This paper adds to the existing body of knowledge of SOE board governance based on OECD (2015) guidelines and how the board performs its advising and control roles. Insights are gained on how board processes contribute to boardroom interaction by using agency theory as the theoretical framework.

Service‐orientation enables new organizational forms and organization initiate shared service centers (SSCs) to become shared service organizations (SSOs) or service‐oriented enterprises (SOEs). Services can be performed in‐house, shared or outsourced. However, this form of organization faces significant challenges and to date not much research has focused on capturing experiences in this domain. The aim of this paper is to identify critical management issues in the development of service‐oriented arrangements.

The research used a combination of literature and case study research, whereby literature provided the theoretical foundations and the case study is used to identify the critical research challenges.

Technological developments enable a service‐oriented approach, leading to new organizational forms and a shift towards a more market‐oriented type of control. The SOE is an enterprise that is modularized in business domains and organized around SSCs. New products can be created by orchestrating the services provided by the service centers, and this orchestration is expected to become a core capability. Service centers display varying levels of modularity, which influences the sourcing options. In our case study, the SSO and SOE emerged and evolved out of SSCs, and as a result an incremental, staged approach should be adopted with regard to its implementation. The main critical management issues are a carefully executed strategy, the redesign and reorganization of activities and roles, the standardization of processes, applications and the underlying IT architecture, and management of the transformation by involving all stakeholders.

The SOE is explored using a single case study, which although it provides in‐depth insight, limits statistical generalization. Further research should focus on the benefits, drawbacks and risks of these concepts. In addition, the bundling and orchestration of services need to be investigated.

This type of change is often technology driven. Companies should address the critical management issues when they adopt a more service‐oriented approach at a business level.

To date, there are very few empirical studies that look at SSO and the SOE. This paper offers a contribution by investigating a real‐life case study, analyzing the kind of organization involved, and identifying the challenges and issues.

The purpose of this paper is to explore multiple stakeholders’ perceptions of leadership in Vietnamese state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

The paper presents findings from semi-structured interviews that were conducted in Vietnam, with seven different stakeholders who had varying understandings of Vietnamese business leadership within the Vietnamese business context. All interviews were transcribed, then translated into English, and thematic analysis of the interview data undertaken.

The paper suggests that there was a significant variation in Vietnamese leadership perceptions when compared to Western leadership practices, especially when considering the perceptions of those stakeholders with regard to business leadership in the Vietnamese collectivist cultural context. The themes presented include: SOE decision making and responsibility; SOE promotions and appointments; and SOE performance.

In the absence of studies of leadership in Vietnamese SOEs, and leadership studies in the Vietnamese culture in general, this research was deliberately exploratory and qualitative. Future mixed methods or quantitative studies are recommended to offer more generalizable conclusions.

Implications are discussed that point to leadership changes in Vietnamese organizations, and at the individual level, to assist the Vietnamese government, SOEs, and future leaders. Recommendations are also made that are intended to assist foreign business investors and multinational companies operating in Vietnam, now and in the future, to improve their leadership capacity within this context.

Vietnam is a country in social and economic transition. Understanding the leadership practices and perceptions, especially how that might differ from leadership in Western nations, is critical for the success of organizations in Vietnam and, in turn, for the economic and social prosperity of the Vietnamese people.

The paper contributes perceptions of business leadership in Vietnamese SOEs that have not previously been explored and should be, especially given this critical time of economic and social transition for the Vietnamese nation and economy.

The purpose of this chapter is to share the findings of a qualitative case study focusing on international sustainability guidelines’ ‘fit’ at a mega South African state-owned enterprise (SOE). The case study set out to determine if international guidelines developed in the West fit when the home country of the company is in the global South. The case study drew on document analysis and 23 serial interviews with 12 formally employed sustainability champions and the analysis was conducted through applied thematic analysis (ATA) using the computer-aided qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) Atlas.ti. The case study was conducted at a South African SOE with over 60,000 employees and an average annual revenue of 50 billion Rand. The study found that there were several international sustainability guidelines in use at the SOE and that the guidelines in use were not only a good fit but were valuable to the sustainability champions and the company’s corporate sustainability governance structures. The research is limited in that it is not generalizable; however, it is transferrable to similar contexts.

The study recommends that companies ensure that they adopt guidelines that are appropriate for their organization, industry and the regions wherein they operate and that sustainability guidelines may be particularly useful in promoting corporate sustainability within the organization and establishing sustainability-related governance mechanisms which may be valuable for stakeholders as well. This research demonstrates that companies who engage in international trade are likely to benefit from international sustainability guidelines and reveals unique practices which the company proactively engages into ensure that the guidelines are effectively applied.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a systematic approach to measuring, tracking, monitoring and continuously improving service efficiency, availability and quality in hospitality operational settings.

The proposed measure of service operational effectiveness (SOE) consists of three indicators. They include the availability indicator, the quality indicator, and the efficiency indicator.

The paper finds that the proposed operational performance approach based on the SOE is consistent with the themes of performance measures and measurement reported in the literature.

In this paper, the proposed service operational effectiveness approach represents a serious attempt at quantifying the key facets of service effectiveness in hospitality operational settings. The validation of this performance assessment and measurement approach is worthy of future research.

The paper sees that the approach advocated by the SOE has operational and strategic relevance to decision‐makers of hospitality organizations. Field interviews with hospitality operating managers in different operating base cultures confirmed this.

This paper presents a practical, systematic approach to the problem of enhancing service operational effectiveness in hospitality organizations. Relevant implementation issues associated with the proposed approach are also addressed. Interviews with operational managers representing different types and sizes of hospitality organizations in different operational cultures were utilized to provide initial validation of the proposed approach and to shed some light on relevant practical implementation issues.

The concept of power in the literature is not conclusive yet and still contradictive. As contested concept, power have multi-definition in the literature. This study aims to construct a concept of power between organizations, state-owned enterprises (SOE) and communities in the context of community-based tourism in Borobudur, Indonesia.

Participants were 29 individuals representing SOEs (i.e. executive members) and local communities (e.g. village chiefs, community enterprise, managers and residents). Data collection was conducted through interviews, focus group discussions, field records and documents. Using grounded theory, the data were analyzed using open, axial and selective coding.

This study discovered that power was fluid. At first, power was a static resource then when it exchanged, it turned into relational/power interplay and at last, became output resource. There was a transformation of antecedent resources of power into a consequential source of power through relationship processes.

This study should be replicated in other settings for further research, for example, in a business-to-business context and business-to-government to develop a general framework.

Policymakers should be aware of such fluid power to ensure that community-based tourism programs can benefit all parties involved.

Findings from this study make several contributions to current literature as follows: this study extends from the existing theories of power, the community-based tourism context where this study was conducted represents actual social situation allowing it to be transferrable to real environment and elaborating theory of power into a comprehensive framework.

This paper aims to examine the integration of entrepreneurship and strategy to develop a conceptual framework of strategic entrepreneurship. The framework is developed through an analysis of theory and refined through an examination of practice.

This framework is considered in the context of potentially entrepreneurial and strategic activity undertaken by 12 of the 17 state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) operating in New Zealand in 2006‐2007. Based on a review of documents, observation, and interviews with SOE executives, cases of 12 SOE activities were analysed to compare and contrast strategic entrepreneurship in practice.

The findings reveal distinct elements within the four activities classified as strategic entrepreneurship, activities, such as leveraging from core skills and resources from a strategic perspective, and innovation from an entrepreneurial perspective.

This study is one of the first to examine the nature of strategic entrepreneurship in practice and the associated financial returns.

This paper aims to establish the extent to which South African state-owned entities (SOEs), where integrated reporting is a quasi-mandatory reporting requirement, have incorporated the principles of the international integrated reporting framework. These identified South African SOE reporting practices are compared with the ‘integrated reporting’ related disclosures of SOEs in selected countries, where integrated reporting remains voluntary.

This paper deploys a qualitative research approach, to thematically analyse the content of publicly available annual or integrated reports of South Africa SOEs, as the primary country of analysis, with those of their counterparts in five purposively selected countries. The relative scores for the SOEs of each country is calculated using a disclosure index derived from the international integrated reporting framework principles.

The paper found that despite being a quasi-mandatory reporting requirement, not all South African SOEs complied with all the international integrated reporting framework principles. Accepting the assertion that integrated reporting enhances organisational transparency and accountability, the accountability disclosure practices of South African SOEs appear more comprehensive than their counterparts in other countries.

Extant research into integrated reporting has primarily focussed on the profit-seeking private sector, with limited research into its applicability in the public sector. This paper attempts to address this paucity by examining aspects of integrated reporting by South African SOEs, which are then compared to accountability reporting practices in other countries.