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Examines the theoretical influence of Peter Drucker’s writings on the discipline of public administration. A quasi‐empirical study using content analysis illustrates the frequency with which Drucker is cited as a source in those public administration texts and journals found in Books in Print and the Social Sciences Citation Index. Overall, citations number relatively few when measured against leading scholars in the field. Specific conceptual patterns emerge among the ideas credited to Drucker: leadership and motivation, organizing, and social ecology. Public administration scholars may de‐emphasize Drucker’s contributions, based on his criticism of government action, over‐simplification of obstacles to effective public management, and the interdisciplinary scope of his subject‐matter. However, Drucker’s contributions to the discipline through such innovative concepts as management‐by‐objectives and privatization cannot be overlooked, nor can public administrators afford to summarily dismiss Drucker’s judgements of government.

In recent years, consumers today recognise organic foods as high-quality products which can benefit them in various aspects. The tendency to switch consumption behaviours from conventional to ecological food products or organic food has largely been due to the claims that organic crops are grown in eco-friendly and sustainable environments. Thus, the study highlighted unique results on young consumers' purchasing intentions from a new perspective. The paper aims to investigate the factors influencing consumers' purchase decision towards organic food, particularly amongst Generation Y consumers.

The underlying fuzzy set theory is employed to handle the fuzziness of consumers' perceptions since the attributes are usually expressed in linguistic preferences. Overall, the study focussed on five important aspects – health consciousness, environmental concern, social influencing and ethical concern – that also include twenty criteria that had been identified and introduced after a thorough review of related literature.

The results reveal that the most important criteria in the selected firm are environment protection, chemical instrument, buying attitude and animal testing. In comparison, the cause group includes criteria such as environment protection, natural food and support for training programmes, whilst the effect group includes production practices, monitoring protections and ethically produced food.

The sample collection from the study focussed on Generation Y consumers who consume organic food in Malaysia. This could lead to the limitation towards external generalisability. The study will provide numerous advantages to the communities. The policy maker should develop a proper marketing strategy to promote organic food as food that is healthier, better in nutrition and safer for society.

Utilising fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) in analysing the fuzziness of consumers' perceptions towards consumers' purchase decision can be expected to expand the breadth of knowledge to both academic and practical.

This study explores how virtual learners perceive the use of humor in instructor-developed videos and their other factors for learning effectiveness in an online course.

The study adopted a set of qualitative methods flowing from lesson study, to pilot study, to self-declaration of a learning style, to semi-structured interviews. Through the process, 142 undergraduate business students from the same online course, of different learning styles, discussed their perspectives on the instructor's use of humor and their learning preferences in online situations. Thematic analysis was performed.

First, humor is deemed harmless, but its value is perceived at different degrees among the four styles of adult learners for their benefit of learning motivation toward an online course. Second, four common themes that respond to learning effectiveness online are addressed.

Similar studies with additional samples, including students in other countries, in different age groups and/or on different online courses, are encouraged to strengthen the current findings.

The results provide evidence to school administrators, course developers and instructors on the importance of using a diverse pedagogy in online education. To motivate virtual learners, being humorous from instructors proves insufficient but developing the course with all respective features for different learners' styles is a clue.

It is among the first studies contextualizing a differential relationship between humor and learners' styles as well as evaluating the effectiveness of an online course from the learning-style standpoint.

This article reveals a managerial issue that multinational corporations (MNCs) in China are at a strategic crossroad where their employees are competing with the same sources of guanxi networks for different business deals simultaneously.

Triggered by a real company case in China and guided by a literature review on business guanxi, the author bridged them into a specific inquiry, as little was known and should be further examined.

The author identified a paradoxical/applied scenario in MNCs between the use of guanxi and overall firm performance damaged by overusing it.

Empirical studies are deemed necessary to seek more understanding between the role of guanxi and MNCs in China.

Guanxi is not a straightforward guarantee of business achievements in China. Management should note the influence of its actors – own employees – who can potentially diminish the positive returns of guanxi on overall firm’s achievements because of non-obvious interplays among employees and “contacts” on the overlapping guanxi networks. The larger the organisation, the higher the risk is.

This article proposes a new line of thoughts for practitioners about the effect of business guanxi on overall firm performance and serves as a starting point for academics to explore empirical research. The concept of overlapping guanxi networks is institutionalised and discussed. A three-step rule is also suggested for MNCs as a basic solution.

This study examines employees' learning preferences in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) at different life-cycle stages.

The study has two phases. Phase I classified a sample of 30 Hong Kong SMEs into three different life-cycle stages (inception, high growth or maturity). Phase II then explored/compared their employees' learning practices in terms of importance using a mixed-method design through an online learning questionnaire followed by face-to-face semi-structured interviews.

Based on a list of 32 learning practices common to SME workplaces, the study identified how SME employees perceive the importance of a learning practice. The top 5 and the bottom 5 learning practices in SMEs across life-cycle stages are presented to promote best interests for SME executives.

While SME learning is highly varied, this study sheds light on some traceable context about it as an SME grows. Similar studies with additional SMEs, including SMEs in other locations, are encouraged to strengthen the findings.

The findings help SME executives understand what learning practices are most important (or least important) for their employees, given the life-cycle stage of the firm. Aligning a business with employees' learning preferences in a timely fashion is a managerial decision to be made for driving organizational effectiveness.

It is among the first studies connecting employee learning in SMEs and organizational life cycle to address a critical but missing inquiry.

This cross-disciplinary, empirical study aims to examine the phenomenon of organizational opinion leadership. Extant research concerning social capital and both referent and expert power suggests that informal opinion leaders within an organizational setting have the ability to influence their co-workers. This study focuses on the transformational leadership characteristics of idealized influence-attributed (charisma) and -behavior (role modeling). The social exchange aspects of the opinion leader–seeker relationship process are examined through an application of dyadic concepts found within leader–member exchange (LMX) theory. This study examines potential outcomes of opinion leader influence, specifically, opinion-seeker perceived organizational support (POS), affective commitment and normative commitment.

This study examines the dynamics of organizational opinion leader (OOL)–organizational opinion seeker (OOS) relationship to determine whether OOLs influence OOSs through role modeling and charisma, captured through the idealized influence aspect of transformational leadership. The OOL–OOS relationship is examined through the lens of LMX, commonly used to examine supervisor–subordinate exchange relationships. This study also examines whether OOLs’ idealized influence and OOL–OOS exchange relationships are related to OOSs’ perceived organizational support (POS) and both affective and normative commitment, and whether POS mediates their influence. Hypotheses are offered and survey data collected from a heterogeneous sample of 646 individuals is examined using structural equation modeling.

The results suggest that idealized influence consistently positively influences the outcomes. LMX-affect, -loyalty and -professional respect influence OOS perceptions of POS. Idealized influence and POS influence OOS affective and normative commitment. LMX-affect influences OOS affective and normative commitment, while LMX-loyalty influences normative commitment. LMX-professional respect slightly influenced OOS affective commitment negatively, suggesting that respect does not engender positive feelings and had no influence on normative commitment.

This interdisciplinary study integrates concepts found within marketing, political science and organizational literature works to shed new light on the informal influence organizational members have on one another, which furthers our understanding of both shared leadership and opinion leadership. This research provides another frame for the concept of shared leadership, suggesting that OOL influence occurs horizontally and vertically within organizations. The overall findings suggest that both the characteristics of opinion leaders and the quality of OOL–OOS relationships matter.

This research highlights the importance of recognizing and enabling organizational members whose opinions are sought by their peers. Organizational opinion leadership exists within organization and influences organizational members’ attitudes and perceptions. Therefore, it is a necessity that organizations understand the phenomenon and guide it, much as organizational culture is guided, so that it produces positive organizational outcomes.

Very little research exists concerning organizational opinion leadership. This study breaks new ground by developing theory, applying accepted constructs to the phenomenon and empirically testing the impact of opinion leadership.

In recent years, practitioners have identified a number of problems with traditional performance management (PM) systems, arguing that PM is broken and needs to be fixed. In this chapter, we review criticisms of traditional PM practices that have been mentioned by journalists and practitioners and we consider the solutions that they have presented for addressing these concerns. We then consider these problems and solutions within the context of extant scholarly research and identify (a) what organizations should do going forward to improve PM practices (i.e., focus on feedback processes, ensure accountability throughout the PM system, and align the PM system with organizational strategy) and (b) what scholars should focus research attention on (i.e., technology, strategic alignment, and peer-to-peer accountability) in order to reduce the science-practice gap in this domain.

Organizational decision‐makers require information presented in ways that allow them to make informed decisions on the effectiveness of change interventions. Current statistical methods do not provide enough information about the practical value of organizational interventions to decision‐makers. It is proposed that a strong hypothesis testing strategy provides a partial answer to this problem. The hypothesis testing method presented here uses Bayesian statistics to test null hypotheses other than the traditional Ho = 0. A description of the evaluation of a change project in six manufacturing plants of a large United States corporation is provided. The data from this project is used to show how both statistical and practical significance may be tested using this hypothesis testing method. The applicability of the strong hypothesis testing approach to the assessment of organizational change is then discussed, and recommendations are made for evaluations conducted in field settings.

The purpose of this study is to relate the practice of organisational learning in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to the organisational life cycle (OLC), contextualising the differential aspects of an integrated relationship between them.

It is a mixed-method study with two consecutive phases. In Phase I, 30 Hong Kong SMEs identified through theoretical sampling were classified into three life-cycle stages – inception, high growth and maturity. In Phase II, their employees’ learning practices (grouped by learning levels) were statistically compared using the analysis of variance and then followed up for confirmation with qualitative semi-structured interviews.

This study uniquely suggests the nature of a relationship between SME organisational learning and the OLC. Empirical results show that three of the four learning levels (individual, group, organisational and inter-organisational) practised in SMEs are varied in importance between life-cycle stages.

Comparative studies are encouraged in other parts of the world to strengthen the findings – with either SMEs or large organisations.

The study informs SME owner/managers about what is important for employee learning at different business stages so that appropriate learning strategies or human resource development policies can be formulated in a timely fashion to promote competitiveness.

It is among the first studies to connect SME learning with organisational growth. The relationships found serve as a sound foundation for further empirical investigations.