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The concept of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) attracts considerable attention in the organizational literature. Focusing on issues related to measurement of EO and using a three-pronged framework to organize the growing diversity of EO measures, the authors conduct a systematic literature review on how EO is captured and assessed in the empirical literature. Specifically, the authors classify 551 empirical works according to the approach to measurement (i.e., managerial perceptions, content analysis, and resource allocations) which allows the authors to document and critically analyze prevalent measurement practices within the literature. Based on the synthesis, the authors identify key measurement-related tensions that may inhibit cumulative knowledge development in the area of EO, such as ad hoc modification of seminal scales and lack of theoretical clarity with respect to measurement. Additionally, the authors find that research into the antecedents of EO as well as causality and temporality of the phenomenon is underdeveloped, which the authors attribute to scarce use of mixed methods. The authors conclude chapter by discussing the challenges involved in measuring EO and offering possible recommendations for future inquiry.

Consumer racism describes the act of purchase discrimination based on ethnic and/or cultural differences. As the original consumer racism scale was developed based on a western context and environment, most of its items may be unsuitable for use in certain non-western countries. The purpose of this paper is to modify the existing consumer racism scale to include the elements of inter-ethnic relationships, historical occurrences and political situations, which are crucial in shaping and influencing racism in a multi-religion and multi-racial context.

After generating new items and retaining or removing others for a modified consumer racism scale, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is performed based on 145 respondents followed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) based on 176 respondents. The modified scale, including two other related constructs (consumer ethnocentrism and consumer animosity), is then tested through structural equation modeling (SEM) using WarpPLS 5.0 and data from 495 respondents.

EFA and CFA results suggest that the modified eight-item consumer racism scale is applicable in a multi-ethnic scenario. However, SEM findings contradict previous studies; thus, discussion of the possible effects of consumer racism is based on two different approaches.

Future research could be expanded into other ethnic groups and countries, and/or to different products, categories and brands.

The main contributions of this study are the validation of the modified measurement scale and demonstration of its applicability in a multi-ethnic scenario. The study is based on data from a multi-ethnic, multi-religion and multi-cultural country: Malaysia.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the voluntary implementation of an internal audit department (IAD) by municipalities has any influence on external auditors' opinions.

This study population comprises the 308 Portuguese municipalities, from which the authors extracted a sample of 179. Financial and audit reports were collected from the period under analysis (2014–2017). The sample was then divided into two groups: municipalities that had voluntarily implemented an IAD and those that had not. Internal audit departments were characterized according to their robustness – whether they were more or less robust. First, a descriptive statistical analysis of the dataset was performed to analyze the representativeness of the sample and to extract insights. To address the research questions, ordinal random effect regression models were considered.

Contrary to the authors' expectations, the voluntary implementation of an IAD had no influence on the audit report type. However, when the authors refined the approach to include the robustness of the IAD, it became clear that this variable does influence the report issued by the external auditor.

This paper contributes to the current literature by determining the effects of the robustness of IADs on municipality audit reports. As far as the authors know, this paper is novel. Since auditing plays an important role in the transparency of public financial statements and in promoting equity, this study shows that a robust IAD is an advantage in the pursuit of these goals.

Cosmopolitanism is on the rise in India and traditionally shoppers have been known to patronize local stores. There is a need therefore to see the effect of cosmopolitanism and culture in context of loyalty towards local stores. Grocery items constitute major portion of purchase from local stores, therefore, pricing was also considered as a variable affecting store loyalty. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The paper used conclusive approach using a structured questionnaire for survey. The sample consisted of 710 respondents. There was almost an equal representation of both genders and also of metropolitan and non-metropolitan consumers.

Culture and price affected local store loyalty directly. Cosmopolitanism was not found to have direct effect on loyalty. Within cultural dimensions, masculinity emerged as the most dominating trait. Minor modifications in cultural scale and major modifications in local store loyalty and cosmopolitanism are also suggested.

The study focuses only on three factors: price, culture, and cosmopolitanism. It does not examine influence of variables like personal values, lifestyle, and personality on local store loyalty behaviour. The research did not examine relationship between nature and type of product purchase decisions and its impact on store choice.

Local stores need not be unduly worried with the incoming of organized players. The organized players should try to be cheaper and learn some tactics of local stores like customization, etc. There is a case for allowing FDI in multi-brand retail.

Cosmopolitanism not affecting the local store loyalty directly is the original contribution of the paper. The finding casts doubts on the growth strategy of organized retailers who are opening new stores with the thinking that cosmopolitan consumer will shop from them instead of local retailers.

Attachment theory is emerging as an important theoretical foundation in marketing because of the relational nature of consumption, but little guidance exists as to which of many attachment style measures is most suitable for use by researchers. As a result, many measures are being used with little justification, and frequently, these scales are being adapted due to poor measurement fit, length or wording unrelated to the focal attachment figure. This paper aims to evaluate seven existing attachment style measures and provides recommendations regarding which measure is the most suitable for assessing the impact of chronic attachment styles on marketing outcomes.

A literature review identified seven measures of attachment style for analysis. Two studies examine the psychometric properties, susceptibility to response bias and predictive validity of the seven measures (Study 1n = 325 and Study 2n = 205).

Among the seven scales evaluated, the Johnson et al. (2012) [Johnson, Whelan, and Thomson (JWT)] measure exhibited the best psychometric properties and predictive validity for general (i.e. not relationship-specific) attachment styles. In addition, two relationship-specific measures, also with strong psychometric properties, were better able to capture their respective relationships or relationship types than general attachment styles, as expected.

This research provides guidance to researchers on which measure to use when examining the impact of attachment style in marketing.

This research provides marketing researchers guidance on which measure to use when examining the impact of general attachment styles. Because the JWT scale is brief, psychometrically sound and demonstrates strong predictive validity, it can be used for academic and managerial purposes. The authors also confirm previous research suggesting that relationship-specific measures of attachment style may act differently than general interpersonal attachment style measures and vary in their ability to predict marketing outcomes.

This research is the first to provide guidance regarding which measure of attachment style to use in marketing and consumer research. This research can serve as a reference point for future researchers in selecting measures of attachment style and may allow for convergence on a narrow set of measures to advance research in marketing.

Service quality is an elusive and abstract construct, so that particular effort is required to establish a valid measure. Patients' perceptions of health services seem to have been largely ignored by health care providers. The purpose of this paper is to propose a modified approach to the measurement of service quality in a primary health care setting.

Through the use of the HEALTHQUAL scale adapted from the SERVQUAL scale to the context of primary health care centres, the authors measure the perceptions of service quality reported by both users and health centre managers in Spain. Taking service quality to be a construct of a formative nature, the authors propose a modification for its measurement using partial least squares (PLS) path modelling, as recommended in the literature for the modeling of formative constructs.

It is found that the model provides health centre managers with a tool for the measurement of functional quality in their organization. The results reveal the importance of health staff attributes and efficiency measures for the perception of health centre quality.

The model can also be used to measure how health care centre managers believe that patients perceive the quality of their service. This allows the potential gap between the provider's view and the customer's view to be assessed and monitored.

The paper extends the previous literature in two directions. First, based on SERVQUAL, it presents a general framework for measuring primary health care service quality as a construct of a formative nature. Second, it is the first application of PLS path modeling to the simultaneous examination of both users' and health centre managers' perceptions in a European context.

To create a sustainable environment, the aim of this study is to explore and identify the components of environmental attitude that can drive the specific ecological behaviour of Indian consumers. Further, it defines environmental attitude components as moderators and investigates them as predictor of ecological behaviour.

The constructs of environmental attitude (EA) and ecological behaviour (EB) are measured using standardized scales with modifications that represent demography of Indian consumers, then, introduced among 300 respondents. Factor analysis, correlations of the factors, and regression analysis are used to draw the results.

Constructs of EA and EB are found to be multidimensional and support the literature. Many of their components are found to be significantly correlated inferring that consumers behave ecologically in specific manners depending on the formed attitude. Also, findings suggest that EA components work as predictors of EB. Further, developing a positive environmental attitude is a step to achieve sustainable environment.

An attempt is made to improve scales to best suit Indian conditions but development of a reliable and valid measure never ends. This may partly limit the generality of the results. To study fresh issues on Indian conditions, a new scale index can be tested. Researcher, producers, media, policy planners and executives will get a cue to generate relevant value of their work.

The paper is a maiden attempt on Indian consumers and has enough potential to change the behaviour for achieving sustainable living. It will strengthen the literature in extrapolating the consumer classes besides identifying two new components of EB: costly exercise and uncaring behaviour.

The success of implementing Deming's management method depends on the ability of managers to operationally define and measure Deming's 14 Points. Tamimi et al. developed a set of operational measures for these 14 Points. They tested the validity and reliability of their instrument using a sample of firms that were involved in implementing TQM practices from one to five years out from implementation. This paper aims to examine this issue.

In this study, which retested their measurement items, data were collected from over 100 manufacturing and service companies of all sizes across the USA and Canada. The data were analyzed using similar statistical analysis procedures and comparisons were made with the results of Tamimi et al.'s study.

The results replicated the study by Tamimi et al. and supported their operational definitions with two exceptions. The scales for “Eliminating slogans and targets”, and “Taking action to accomplish the transformation”, were not found to be reliable in either the original or the current study. These two scales need to be modified and new questions are suggested in the paper.

The response rate for this study was high. However, self‐selection to participate and self‐reported responses could lead to some bias in responses.

The resulting operational definitions should prove useful to organizations interested in adopting Deming's management method.

The purpose of the paper is to suggest effective choices for key decisions when pursuing a programmatic research strategy in management, spirituality and religion (MSR). An example is provided of how the suggestions can be used.

Suggestions for research were gleaned from current sources in research methodology. The example provided was a study of 398 employees who were surveyed on spirituality, job satisfaction and intent to leave their job. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test three research hypotheses.

Using item analysis, exploratory factor analysis and SEM can be a way to pursue research using variables related to spirituality and religion.

A programmatic research strategy employing SEM can effectively model how spirituality/religious variables directly and indirectly affect outcomes significant to the organization.

The purpose of this research is to examine the interplay between family commitment as a family-centric resource and professionalization of the organization as a firm-centric resource to determine how the two phenomenon come together to enhance business performance in the context of privately held family firms.

Deploying the theoretical lens offered by the resource-based view, a conceptual link is developed between family commitment to the firm and firm performance with the potential moderating influence of firm professionalization. The hypotheses are tested using data collected from 357 privately held medium-to-large family-owned manufacturing companies in Bangladesh. The data are analyzed through structural equation modeling using SmartPLS (v.3.2).

The data analysis suggests that in absence of the moderator; professionalization, family commitment has a positive and significant association with firm performance. While in the presence of the moderator the above relationship is substantially stronger. The findings indicate that when family-specific resources and firm-specific resources are synchronized, it enhances performance of the family firm and puts it on a strong economic footing toward a more sustainable future.

Cross-sectional nature of the study exposes it to the specter of common method bias despite the fact that procedural remedies were initiated to minimize the impact of such occurrence. Furthermore, data were collected from a single individual in each organization. Therefore, a longitudinal study with data obtained from multiple individuals at different levels of the organization would possibly yield more robust findings.

Leaders of family firms may find pertinent clues from the outcome of this study. Particularly, the confluence of family commitment to the firm as a family-specific resource and professionalization as a firm-specific resource can be valuable, rare, difficult to imitate and substitute source of competitive advantage for the family business organization.

Survival of family businesses is vital to the global economy as one of the primary drivers of global gross domestic product growth and source of new employment. Policymakers can benefit from the findings of this study to customize policies to nurture growth of family enterprises and incentivize family firms to adopt professionalization through better governance and transparent managerial procedures.

A nuanced understanding of how family commitment and firm professionalization combine to significantly improve performance of family firms has not been dominant in the literature. Therefore, findings of this study carry special theoretical implications, because it suggests that both family-specific features and firm-specific features are necessary for enhanced levels of firm-centric business outcomes such as economic performance.