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This study aims to investigate the interaction between branding strategies, levels of perceived fit and consumer innovativeness on the evaluation of new products from the perspective of situational strength.

Two experiments were conducted to empirically test the hypotheses.

A significant three-way interaction of branding strategy, perceived fit and consumer innovativeness on the evaluation of the new products was found. A significant two-way interaction of branding strategy and perceived fit was also found. Situational clarity fully mediates the relationship between branding strategy and consumer product evaluations at various fit levels.

The theory of situational strength may shed light on the selection of target market when managers launch new products. Innovative consumers are the target market for the new products under new branding or low fit sub-branding; under brand extension or high fit sub-branding, consumers are the target for the new products regardless of their degree of innovativeness.

This is the first work to apply situational strength theory to a new product evaluation context. The theory provides a unified framework for explaining the cognitive processes involved when consumers use and combine marketing cues (i.e. branding strategies and fit levels) to evaluate new products; it also facilitates evaluating how the effects of consumer innovativeness are accentuated or attenuated based on various combinations of marketing cues. Most research on the evaluation of new products has examined the influence of consumer innovativeness, perceived fit or branding strategies as distinct entities. This study simultaneously examined the three.

This article explores how strengths-based recruitment is enabling graduate recruiters to engage, attract and select the best talent. Drawing from the example of major graduate recruiter, Ernst & Young, it shows how strengths assessment can be used at each stage of the recruitment and selection process.

Strengths-based recruitment is focused on assessing candidates in relation to their performance and motivation. It identifies what people do well and enjoy doing, relative to the requirements and job-fit of the prospective employer. Strengths are also assessed online as part of a front-end screening process through the situational strengths test. This assesses the strengths candidates have, together with how they would use those strengths in a range of scenarios and situations they would be likely to experience in the role.

Strengths-based recruitment and the Situational Strengths Test engage candidates by providing them with a realistic job preview of the role. They help candidates to make informed decisions about their own fit with the role. They help organizations to select the candidates who match their requirements more effectively from those who do not, delivering better outcomes for candidates and employers.

Strengths-based recruitment is an engaging recruitment approach that appeals to the Generation Y of current graduates who are focused on the opportunity to use their strengths at work. Ernst & Young has seen improved candidate experience, enhanced business engagement, and better selection outcomes through its use of strengths-based recruitment.

This chapter proposes a model of person-situation interactions to explain when individuals react to demographic diversity in their work places. Qualitative research reported here suggests individual identities likely influence reactions to diversity and should be considered in conjunction with traditional situational factors. The model developed from this research looks at interactions between high and low identification with demographic categories and strong and weak situational cues toward such categories to explain when individuals are most likely to respond (or not respond) to diversity. The proposition that motivated reactions to diversity are observable only when both situational and personal factors contribute is advanced.

This conceptual paper explores how the activation of the individual-level trait grit can explain variance in successor willingness to take over leadership of the family firm.

Drawing from trait activation and situation strength theories, the authors develop a framework to examine the interactions of the two dimensions of grit (passion and perseverance) on the successor's willingness to take control of the family firm.

The authors identify how the grit dimensions would interact with the situational cues present during the succession process to predict the successor's willingness to take control of the family firm and offer testable propositions to guide future empirical work.

The authors help to address the growing need for additional microfoundational family firm research by drawing insights from organizational behavior theories and personality research and apply them to the family firm succession process.

Given its detrimental implications for employees’ well-being and work performance, this paper seeks to understand how workplace loneliness occurs by focusing on a job-related antecedent, job autonomy. Drawing on role identity theory and situational strength theory, the purpose of this paper is to propose that job autonomy relates to workplace loneliness via perceived insider status, a process moderated by perceived clan culture.

A two-wave survey served to collect data from 430 knowledge workers in 17 enterprises from several major cities in Eastern China.

Job autonomy relates to workplace loneliness via the mediation of perceived insider status. Specifically, job autonomy impacts positively on perceived insider status, which further reduces workplace loneliness. Besides, the relationship between perceived insider status and workplace loneliness is conditional on perceived clan culture – perceived insider status decreases workplace loneliness more effectively in the case of higher perceived clan culture. Furthermore, perceived clan culture moderates the mediating effect of perceived insider status.

This paper is among the few attempts to offer a comprehensive framework in which job and organizational characteristics combine to explain workplace loneliness. Moreover, the findings illustrate that perceived insider status and perceived clan culture complement each other in alleviating workplace loneliness.

Human resource (HR) process research emerged as a response to questions about how (bundles of) HR practices related to organizational outcomes. The goal of HR process research is to explain variability in employee and organization outcomes by focusing on how HR practices are intended (adopted) by senior managers, the way that these HR practices are implemented and communicated by line managers, and how employees perceive, understand, and attribute these HR practices. In the first part of this chapter, we present a review of 20 years of HR process research from the start, to how it developed, and is now maturing. Within the body of HR process research, several different research theoretical streams have emerged, which are largely studied in isolation without benefiting from each other. Therefore, in the second part of this chapter, we draw on previous work to propose a staged process model in which we integrate the different research streams of HR process research, recognizing contingencies in the model. This leads us to an agenda for future research and practical implications in the final part of the chapter.

The purpose of this paper is to present a discussion of the ways that personality tests have been used in accounting research.

The paper is structured as a literature review of the personality testing area, with particular emphasis on its application in accounting research.

The idea of personality impacting accounting has received some attention in recent years. However, it is an understudied area and the research to date is somewhat inconclusive. The findings are that over the last decade personality psychologists have made significant advances in personality theory and measurement. This paper summarizes: the theory of personality; the two most common personality typologies (i.e. the Jungian psychology‐based Myers‐Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the Five Factor Model (FFM); and discusses the application of personality in accounting research.

It is somewhat problematical to draw precise boundaries that include all relevant studies, and yet exclude appropriately distant ones, as there are a number of constructs that may, or may not, be considered to be “personality”. Another limitation is that the research studies published so far do not all agree one with another.

The conclusion reached is that, while there is a role for personality/accounting research using both MBTI and FFM, research using the FFM is particularly important for analytical and predictive research in this area and to triangulate previous MBTI studies.

As a literature review, there is little that is intrinsically new here, but the juxtaposition of different approaches and findings will be informative to researchers in the area and, to a lesser extent, practitioners.

Green product development is a pivotal way to achieve environmental sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to theorize and empirically test how environmentally specific leadership enhances the green product development performance from the perspective of the HRM system. In this regard, the authors investigate the mediating role of the strength of the HRM system to change with regard to the relationship between environmentally specific leadership and green product development performance. For a substantial explanation of the boundary condition, the authors investigate the moderating role of the green HRM on the relationship between environmentally specific transformational leadership and the strength of the HRM system.

Based on climate strength theory, the authors use the three-wave survey data from 362 top or middle managers in the new energy industry of China. This study uses hierarchical linear regression and bootstrapping method to analyze the mediated moderation effect.

Results confirm a positive effect of environmentally specific leadership and the strength of the HRM system on green product development performance. The authors also found the mediation effect of the strength of the HRM system and the moderation effect of green HRM are all significant.

This study integrates the perspectives of both content-focused HRM and process-focused HRM and demonstrates why leadership and the HRM system could jointly enhance green product development performance in Asia.

The purpose of this paper is to explore contextual barriers to supplier development for sustainability (SDS) in global supply chains and managerial remedies to mitigate such barriers.

A dyadic case study design was adopted with a Western European buyer and six of its Chinese suppliers. The database consists of 41 interviews and 81 documents.

Contextual barriers to SDS in global supply chains derive from complexities in the sustainability concept, socio-economic differences, spatial and linguistic distance, as well as cultural differences between buyers and suppliers. Partial remedies include effective joint communications, an open organizational culture, and the fostering of cross-contextual understanding.

The findings contribute to theory development at the intersection of sustainable and global supply chain management research. They help to explain why scarce sustainability-related progress in global supply chains has occurred in recent years.

The identified barriers facilitate managerial decision making that will expedite SDS progress in global contexts.

By diffusing knowledge regarding available remedies, the study contributes to improving SDS effectiveness, thereby fostering sustainability capabilities and performance of suppliers.

This research highlights the criticality of contextual barriers to SDS. The barrier effects that stem from differing real-world conceptions of sustainability may inform future sustainable supply chain management research within and beyond SDS.

This conceptual, multi-voiced paper aims to collectively explore and theorize family entrepreneuring, which is a research stream dedicated to investigating the emergence and becoming of entrepreneurial phenomena in business families and family firms.

Because of the novelty of this research stream, the authors asked 20 scholars in entrepreneurship and family business to reflect on topics, methods and issues that should be addressed to move this field forward.

Authors highlight key challenges and point to new research directions for understanding family entrepreneuring in relation to issues such as agency, processualism and context.

This study offers a compilation of multiple perspectives and leverage recent developments in the fields of entrepreneurship and family business to advance research on family entrepreneuring.