Search results

Research serves to elucidate and tackle real-world issues (e.g. capitalizing opportunities and solving problems). Critical to research is the concept of validity, which gauges the extent to which research is adequate and appropriate in representing what it intends to measure and test. In this vein, this article aims to present a typology of validity to aid researchers in this endeavor.

Employing a synthesis approach informed by the 3Es of expertise, experience, and exposure, this article maintains a sharp focus on delineating the concept of validity and presenting its typology.

This article emphasizes the importance of validity and explains how and when different types of validity can be established. First and foremost, content validity and face validity are prerequisites assessed before data collection, whereas convergent validity and discriminant validity come into play during the evaluation of the measurement model post-data collection, while nomological validity and predictive validity are crucial in the evaluation of the structural model following the evaluation of the measurement model. Additionally, content, face, convergent and discriminant validity contribute to construct validity as they pertain to concept(s), while nomological and predictive validity contribute to criterion validity as they relate to relationship(s). Last but not least, content and face validity are established by humans, thereby contributing to the assessment of substantive significance, whereas convergent, discriminant, nomological and predictive validity are established by statistics, thereby contributing to the assessment of statistical significance.

This article contributes to a deeper understanding of validity’s multifaceted nature in research, providing a practical guide for its application across various research stages.

This study presents evidence of the role of performance measurement and management (PMM) in sustainable supply chain governance. This study tests a model hypothesizing whether it is the PMM itself or the mediating effect of supply chain governance that is essential for both business and sustainability performance.

This study builds on a survey of 274 SMEs in Finland.

The findings indicate that PMM does not directly contribute to SMEs’ business or sustainability performance. Supply chain governance mediates the relationship between PMM and business performance. Business performance also enhances sustainability.

These findings can guide managers in managing company relationships with customers and suppliers. The mediating role of supply chain governance highlights the potential of PMM to enhance performance. Without supply chain governance, the PMM, while efficient in traditional business practices, may lose its effectiveness because of the pressure to advance sustainability values within firm operations.

The role of PMM in enhancing supply chain sustainability is frequently overlooked in the existing research, necessitating an empirical evaluation of PMM’s impact on supply chain sustainability. This study addresses this gap by focusing on the SME context, where the pressure to adopt sustainable practices is increasing, yet SMEs employ PMM less frequently than larger firms.

As competitive pressures persist and global economic influences continue to present new challenges, businesses need to be able to respond to emerging circumstances. Goal-setting and planning are key mechanisms contributing to organizational competitive success, yet organizations underappreciate the role of competency and capacity building factors that contribute to successful planning. This paper integrates three theoretical models enabling an investigation into the positive relationships between managerial activities generating information feedback, training in planning and skills and organizational performance outcomes, while exploring the positive mediating roles of goal-setting and planning.

A unique organizational sample of agribusiness producers (n = 499) in Canada is examined. A structural equation path analysis model is used to evaluate the main relationships.

The results suggest that organizations are finding that managerial and training activities should not be considered in isolation, but rather as supports for goal-setting, planning and performance outcomes. Thus, the implications are that managers can find organizational value enhanced through the building of human resource competency (e.g. management activities and training) with these emerging capacities aiding goal setting and planning activities.

This study makes three main contributions: first, by adopting a rational-design perspective and integrating theoretical frameworks focusing on (a) planning-performance and (b) goal-setting-planning. This extended model goes beyond previous studies by including managerial activities, training, goals, planning and performance outcomes. Second, this study uniquely accounts for a more comprehensive set of key confounding factors such as operational activities, organizational strategy and organizational size in the integrated framework. Finally, as far as the authors are aware, there has not been a survey study at the organizational level that has explored the role of managerial activities and training in planning within a similarly comprehensive model.

Low-income consumers’ perceptions of access and inclusion in financial services, remain underresearched. To fill this gap, the purpose of this study, is to investigate elements of low-income consumers’ informal and formal financial service experiences, from their personal experience.

Mixed methods using data collected from low-income consumers in Latin America, reveal a spectrum of consumer perceptions making up access, inclusion and social dependence within financial service experiences. Scales, grounded in the consumer experience, are developed, validated and used to test a model of consumers’ service inclusivity perceptions.

Service costs, information and documentation difficulty, convenience and social dynamics influence low-income consumers’ perceptions of financial service inclusivity.

Analysis reveals differentiation in the impact of aspects of low-income consumers’ experiences between formal and informal financial services. Working directly with this unique population exposes the nuance of their financial service experiences.

This research provides a more holistic perspective on low-income consumers’ financial service experience and provides contextually relevant scales with robust psychometric properties. Services marketers can use this research to inform design and evaluation of financial service offerings for low-income consumers.

This research contributes to study of the wellbeing of low-income consumers by providing understanding of their financial service experiences from their point-of-view and providing contextually-relevant, empirically validated tools for future inquiry.

An effective firm strategy is key to sustained financial performance, while interactions between strategy, employee retention and top talent retention have been seldom explored. We test hypotheses using New Zealand SMEs which are defined as having up to 250 employees. We initially explore firm strategy using Porters competitive advantage model predicting employee retention (including top talent), with study 1 (n = 208) using firm size as a moderator, finding a direct significant relationship from firm strategy toward employee retention. Next, we explore firm strategy predicting firm performance with employee retention mediating and include firm size as a moderator, testing a moderated mediation model in study 2 (n = 474) and study 3 (n = 300, with time-lagged performance).

There are no open databases holding NZ firms’ performance data and thus data was sourced from a Qualtrics survey panel. Such panels have become more common (e.g. Haar et al., 2021a, b) and a recent meta-analysis by Walter et al. (2019) showed that this type of panel data was no different from data sourced through conventional means (i.e. mail survey). We focused on NZ private sector SMEs using senior managers across a range of industries and geographic locations. Because the influence of firm strategy on employee retention remains unknown in the literature, we conducted study 1 (n = 208) to test the initial part of our overall model. Study 2 (n = 474) and study 3 (n = 300) tested the full model (with organizational performance), with study 3 having organizational performance time-lagged by one month.

All direct effect hypotheses are supported, although firm size interacted significantly with firm strategy showing smaller not larger-sized firms leverage firm strategy to achieve superior retention benefits. This was against hypothesis 5a in all three studies. Studies 2 and 3 supported the moderated mediation hypothesis, with firms of larger size having a stronger indirect effect from firm strategy on firm performance while employee retention mediated the influence of firm strategy on firm performance. Finally, dominance analysis found that a quality differentiation strategy was the key strategy across all studies and outcomes. We discuss the implications for organizations.

The first managerial implication from the study is that small and medium sized firms would benefit both from developing a deeper understanding of the strategic alternatives open to them and placing a greater emphasis on the implementation of their selected strategic approach. A second managerial implication relates to findings indicating that retention generally, and top talent retention specifically, is positively related to firm strategy and firm performance. Given the importance and challenges of staff retention, particularly in the current environment where there are significant skill shortages, these results suggest that small and medium sized business would benefit from considering how strategy can create an organizational environment that is attractive to employees and support stronger retention outcomes as a mechanism for driving both retention and performance.

The study makes three major contributions. First, it examines firm strategy and extends the focus on firm performance by including not only employee retention but also top talent retention, responding in part to the call to develop and refine performance measures (Lieberman, 2021). Second, beyond using retention as a mediator, firm size is included as a moderator and a moderated mediation model is ultimately tested. Third, we conduct dominance analysis to identify the key firm strategy that influences firm performance and retention. Ultimately, this paper asks: what is the role of firm strategy on New Zealand SME performance, and what influence does retention and relative firm-size play.

This study aims to investigate the impact of green marketing strategy (GMS) and firms’ decision to invest in or divest from green marketing activities during a crisis on business performance.

The study collected survey data from 245 Greek firms during the 2015 Eurozone crisis to investigate the impact of GMS and green marketing investments on firm resilience during crisis. Time-lagged, objective performance data for a subset of these firms helped examine the impact of GMS on postcrisis financial performance.

Pursuing a GMS builds resilience, especially for companies that decided not to reduce resources allocated to green marketing activities during a recession. Beyond resilience, firms investing in GMS during the crisis experienced improved financial performance in the long run. Finally, this research proposes a typology of GMS responses during a crisis.

This study does not specify which types of green marketing activities lead to more investment or divestment during a crisis.

The study offers insights for allocating resources to green marketing during recessions. Supporting GMSs during unpredictable times is important to successfully navigate performance both during and after a crisis. Six crisis response profiles are offered: green-nonbelievers, dis-investors, reluctants and cautious-, opportunistic- and strategic-green investors.

The study proposes a balanced approach to environmental sustainability, marketing strategy and firm performance during a crisis.

The study argues that GMSs enable firms to survive a crisis and recover from financial shocks.

Social media played an irreplaceable role in young people’s online social life and information consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research focuses on the impact of excessive information on social media about COVID-19 vaccines on Generation Z's (Gen Z) associated psychological states and long-term vaccine advocacy.

The research conducted structural equation modeling analysis with online survey data from 409 Gen Z citizens in the UK.

The findings suggest that excessive information increased Gen Z social media users' ambivalence and conspiracy beliefs around COVID-19 vaccines, which, in turn, reduced their long-term vaccine advocacy in terms of vaccine acceptance, vaccination intention and vaccine promotion. Importantly, Gen Z’s confidence in government and in the healthcare systems during COVID-19 was effective in helping them overcome the detrimental effects of conspiracy beliefs and ambivalence about long-term vaccine advocacy, respectively.

This research reveals the “dark side” of social media use in the post-pandemic period and highlights the significant roles played by social institutions in mitigating the detrimental effects of Gen Z’s support in social decisions. Beyond the context of COVID-19, this research has important implications for facilitating the civic engagement of Gen Z and boosting their confidence in social institutions in terms of social cohesion.

The paper aims to investigate how perceived psychological benefits from employee participation in corporate social responsibility activities affect organizational citizenship behavior across two Asia–Pacific countries with different national cultures.

A stakeholder relationship model, based on social exchange theory, underpinned the investigation that also tested the mediating role of organizational pride. In a cross-cultural context, data were collected from 319 full-time employees in Thailand and the US and analyzed with SEM-PLS.

Anticipated psychological benefits of hedonic value and perceived community value were found to be significant antecedents of organizational citizenship behaviors, operationalized as customer-directed CSR advocacy. Organizational pride played a partial mediating role.

This study addresses a lack of micro-level CSR research into the relationship between psychological benefits of employee participation in CSR and organizational citizenship behavior. Specifically, this is the first study to link CSR drivers with customer-directed employee advocacy of the firms CSR activities. The study is also the first to compare relationships between an Asian and Western context for CSR drivers of organizational citizenship behaviors.

The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of sports sponsorship on brand equity using two managerially related outcomes: price premium and market share.

This study uses a best–worst discrete choice experiment (BWDCE) and compares the outcome with that of the purchase intention scale, an established probabilistic measure of purchase intention. The total sample consists of 409 fans of three soccer teams sponsored by three different competing brands: Nike, Adidas and Puma.

With sports sponsorship, fans were willing to pay more for the sponsor’s product, with the sponsoring brand obtaining the highest market share. Prominent brands generally performed better than less prominent brands. The best–worst scaling method was also 35% more accurate in predicting brand choice than a purchase intention scale.

Future research could use the same method to study other types of sponsors, such as title sponsors or other product categories.

Sponsorship managers can use this methodology to assess the return on investment in sponsorship engagement.

Prior sponsorship studies on brand equity tend to ignore market share or fans’ willingness to pay a price premium for a sponsor’s goods and services. However, these two measures are crucial in assessing the effectiveness of sponsorship. This study demonstrates how to conduct such an assessment using the BWDCE method. It provides a clearer picture of sponsorship in terms of its economic value, which is more managerially useful.

This research examines the long-held belief in the adaption-related literature that a firm’s ability to adapt organizational structure to changing environments is related to superior performance. We create and test a construct that reflects an organization’s ability to change structure, which we call Supply Chain Structural Adaptability (SCSA), rather than relying on proxies (e.g. structural form or organizational modularity) used in prior studies.

Quantitative data was collected from 218 firms to test our conceptual model.

We find that SCSA has a mixed effect on profitable growth under various environmental conditions.

We find evidence that refutes two widely held assumptions in organization research, namely, that structural form serves as a reasonable proxy for structural adaptability and that the benefits of adaptive capabilities always increase as environmental dynamism increases.