Search results

This paper aims to offer a systematic view of religious consumption and its iterative influences on consumers, as well as their differences in attitudes, values and behaviors.

Using a mixed-method approach – both qualitative and quantitative – the study develops religious self-transformation and self-categorization scales to empirically evaluate the hypotheses.

The convergence of consumption, self-identification and religious attitudes and behaviors proffer an essentially subjective concept useful in understanding the existential reflection and supernatural orientation that individuals may seek through consumption. Cluster analysis (based on product, services, media and practices) reveals four quadrants. The non-religious (religious) group has low (high) consumption in all four consumption categories Self-categorization (self-transformation) group has high (low) level of product consumption, but low (high) in all three other categories. This research presented four invisible identities that are visibly different in terms of life satisfaction, religious brand preference, dollars spending on religious products and monetary donation.

This research only considers one medium-size city as opposed to all types of cities. All religious affiliated and nonaffiliated respondents are included in the total sample.

The study offers new insights into the triadic relationship between religious self-identification, religious consumption, and the marketplace that can be used in branding, segmentation, targeting, positioning, and persuasive advertising, public relation and social media, and services marketing.

Religion addresses the nature of existence. In this religion–consumer–brand nexus, consumption is a way for consumers to experience and immense themselves in the sacred to solidify, communicate, transform, improve and transport who they are capitalizing on religious self-identification can affectively promote positive social change.

This work proposes four invisible identities that are different in consumption of religious products and services in terms of patterns and purposes. These groups of consumers shape the marketplace through the derived utility of their religious consumption based on their self-identification, which in turn influences their religious brand preference.

The purpose of this study is to measure intellectual capital of the firm through the eyes of the consumer by investigating the relationships between financial-based brand equity (FBBE) and consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) and their related constructs.

Fifteen consumer brands were evaluated based on three different perspectives of CBBE, and were then regressed on FBBE. Prior to the regression analysis, the FBBEs of 15 consumer brands were standardized using the total assets and three-year weighted average of their brand equity values.

Findings show that existing CBBE scales and related brand dimensions partially explain FBBE, namely, sustainability and brand experience, and that the product category contributes significantly in explaining FBBE. In addition, brand experience is positively associated with FBBE.

The study only includes brands from the food, electronics and clothing industries.

The study provides guidance to brand managers regarding which brand dimensions directly influence brands’ financial values.

The paper empirically measures consumers’ perceptions of the firm’s intellectual capital by using brand equity.

The paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer, who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

The paper finds that, like many scientific advances which have been accompanied by a social slanging match, computer and video games have made a significant contribution to keeping the generation gap as wide as ever.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to digest format.

To achieve business success in a competitive market, hospitality firms are urged to search for different ways to enhance the firms' innovation capabilities. Drawing on dynamic capability theory, this study examined the role of entrepreneurial leadership in promoting product and process innovation through the mediating effect of innovation strategy and the moderating effect of knowledge acquisition.

Data were collected through a time-lagged (two waves, two months apart) survey from 137 managers and 322 employees working in 103 Vietnamese hotels. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the proposed hypotheses in our conceptual model.

The findings revealed that entrepreneurial leadership is positively associated with both product and process innovation. In addition, these relationships are mediated by innovation strategy. While the relationship between innovation strategy and product innovation is moderated by knowledge acquisition, evidence was not obtained for the moderation effect of knowledge acquisition on the link between innovation strategy and process innovation.

The findings advance innovation and leadership literature by identifying the roles of entrepreneurial leaders in managing an organization as a dynamic system and developing appropriate innovation strategy to adapt to rapidly changing environments. In addition, this study offers important implications for hospitality firms that are investing in innovation activities and are seeking ways to promote the firms' innovation of products and processes.

While the current anti-globalisation wave is considered as a regional and cyclical relapse among Western countries, the new era of globalisation has shifted away from stagnant developed economies towards the rising prosperity of emerging Asia, where it is attracting substantial global inward foreign direct investment (FDI). Focussing on Vietnam, the country that is seen as Asia’s next economic tiger, the question of how important intellectual properties (IP) protection is in the international competition for FDI inflows is still unsettled, especially on the under-researched topic of trademarks.

This paper takes on the business history approach, which allows rich evidence from the dynamic and evolving natures of multinational enterprises (MNEs) to drive the research process, so that international business scholars can test models rigorously. The evidence provided in this paper is essentially qualitative and combines trademark registrations data, with trade and FDI statistics between 1986 and 2016, also draws on companies’ archives, industry reports and related newspaper articles.

This paper provides the chronology of intellectual property right (IPR) legal landscapes and the dynamic co-evolution of trademarks and FDI inflows in Vietnam. Three trademark protection strategies for MNEs and their patterns here are addressed. The paper also argues that trademarks bring new insights and IP protection strategy for pharmaceutical MNEs for the case of Vietnam is as important in trademarks as it is in patents. In emerging markets with strong incentives for FDI such as Vietnam, MNEs are not necessarily put off by weak IPR, but rather create alternative strategies for dealing with the lack of IP protection in these emerging market settings.

This study challenges the stream of thoughts that view trademarks as a “neglected intangible asset” among different IPRs, while in fact, trademarks advance MNEs’ knowledge by ensuring competitiveness and long-run survival in emerging markets. This paper is among the first few attempts to look at pharmaceutical industry through the lens of trademarks, moving away from the traditional patent-focussed approach. It extends the understanding of OLI paradigm and highlights that MNEs need to possess Oa and Op advantages not only at the beginning of internationalisation process but rather evolving through the time to cope with imitation risks in the host country.

Integrating the social exchange perspective of helping behavior with self-determination theory (SDT), this study seeks to examine the impact of employees' psychological needs on perceived organizational justice and the impact of perceived organizational justice on employees' helping behavior.

Cross-sectional and cross-organizational data were obtained from 177 full-time employees employed in 12 small- and medium-sized oil and gas service companies. A partial least squares approach using SmartPLS was employed to test the hypotheses.

Results illustrate that the psychological need for competence and need for autonomy are positively related to perceived distributive and procedural justice, respectively. Moreover, perceived distributive and procedural justice are related to helping behavior. Furthermore, perceived distributive justice fully mediates the relationship between the psychological need for competence and helping behavior, whereas perceived procedural justice partially mediates the relationship between the psychological need for autonomy and helping behavior.

From a theoretical standpoint, this study offers some theoretical explanations for how the basic psychological needs identified by SDT activate employees' perceived organizational justice. Practically, this study offers several managerial recommendations that help managers manage helping behavior in the organization effectively.

Employee’s service innovative behavior lays the groundwork for bottom-up innovation and ongoing service improvement in service firms. Therefore, it is vital for service organizations to understand the antecedents of employees service innovative behavior. Drawing upon the social cognitive theory, this study aims to develop a research model that examines the effects of ethical and entrepreneurial leadership on service innovative behavior.

Data were collected from 178 managers and 415 employees working in 178 small- and medium-sized (SME) hotels in Vietnam.

The findings showed that ethical leadership has direct and indirect effects on service innovative behavior, while entrepreneurial leadership only influences service innovative behavior via intrinsic motivation. In addition, trust in leader moderates the effect of intrinsic motivation on service innovative behavior

The study advances current scholarly research on leadership by combining the two areas of entrepreneurial and ethical leadership into one theoretical model and examines how these leadership styles generate hospitality employees’ service innovative behavior through the mediating effect of intrinsic motivation and the moderating effect of trust in leader.

The findings of this research offer significant implications for SME hotels and their managers. In their recruitment processes, hotels should search for particular personality traits, which have been found to predict ethical and entrepreneurial leadership. Hospitality firms also need to encourage communication between leaders and co-workers to enhance employees’ intrinsic motivation.

There are calls for research to examine whether both entrepreneurial and ethical leadership styles can be integrated to enhance employees’ positive outcomes. Evidence about the mechanism linking entrepreneurial and ethical leadership to service innovative behavior is limited. With this stated, the current study makes significant contribution to leadership and innovation literature by filling in these voids.

Upgrading in global value chains (GVCs) has become a crucial strategy for enhancing competitive advantage and attaining higher profitability, especially among firms in developing countries. Drawn from the sociological approach, this study treats GVC upgrading as an entrepreneurial act and examines factors affecting firms' intention to move up in their chains based on the theory of planned behavior. The authors also further test the moderating effects of firms' knowledge about rule of origin and governmental supports on the intention-behavior gap.

In-depth interviews with eight Vietnamese business managers were implemented to support the development of hypotheses and measurement scales. Afterwards, the authors conducted a survey on decision-makers of 402 Vietnamese firms which currently have export-import activities to collect quantitative data for testing the hypothesized relationships.

The empirical results indicate that both attitudes, behavioral control and social norms have significant positive impacts on the intention to upgrade in GVCs. In turn, such intention could further activate actual behaviors to move up in their chains. However, those who have better knowledge about rule of origin and receive governmental supports either in terms of finance, credit or technology have a higher probability of demonstrating actual behavior to upgrade in GVCs once their intentions are formed than those who do not.

This research provides valuable implications for policymakers in accelerating firms' actions to upgrade within their chains, hence, actively enhancing not only organizational performance but also significantly contributes to the national economic development.

While most of the previous studies examine the preconditions for firms to participate and upgrade in their GVCs, there is limited attention on determinants of firms' own intention and actual behavior to upgrade in their chains once they have participated in the GVC. Specifically, this research not only contributes to the existing knowledge regarding factors affecting firms' intention to upgrade in their chains but also closes the gap between the intention and the actual GVC upgrading behavior.

The causal conditions leading to successful human resources outsourcing (HRO) have until now attracted only limited research attention. To address this shortcoming, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how a firm and a HR provider should work together to ensure successful HRO.

By applying a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, the authors demonstrate how combining in different ways provider quality, business understanding, trust, and closed HRO networks can lead to HRO success. In addition, this study compares the causal combinations between cases with differing levels of HR-task interdependence and IT use.

The results of this study reveal three common solutions that lead to successful HRO from both economic and relational viewpoints. The findings also indicate that, from an economic viewpoint, trust is a core condition for achieving HRO success. Moreover, HR-task interdependence and IT use alter the number of solutions and the conditions for attaining HRO success.

Based on the solutions proposed herein, firms can consider different ways to achieve HRO success under diverse conditions.

This work also contributes to building new theories regarding HRO, trust, knowledge sharing, and IT use.

A Chinese proverb states: “Able people should do more work.” Although working hard is a common workplace phenomenon, does it lead to burnout in capable people? This study aims to examine the interactive effects of superior-perceived capability and subordinates’ self-efficacy on subordinate job demands, job involvement and burnout in frontline employees in the hospitality industry.

Data on 41 superiors and 161 subordinates from 16 hotels in Taiwan were collected. Hierarchical linear modeling is used to examine the research hypotheses.

The findings support the hypothesis that self-efficacy leads to high levels of burnout and job involvement. However, superior-perceived capability has no impact on subordinate job demand, job involvement or burnout. While job demands are positively related to the emotional exhaustion of burnout, job involvement is negatively related to depersonalization of burnout. In addition, job involvement partially mediates the relationship between self-efficacy and depersonalization of burnout.

Based on the job demands–resources theory, this study reveals the fresh point of view for the effect of self-efficacy on burnout. This paper explores the dark-side role of self-efficacy for burnout – higher self-efficacy leads to higher burnout – that is contrary to the findings from previous studies and hinges on Chinese cultural values. In addition, the current study provides guidelines for top managers to protect capable employees from burnout by enhancing intrinsic motivation and job involvement.