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This study aims to examine the influence of the three dimensions of travel agents’ manager competencies – ability, motivation and opportunity seeking – on knowledge transfer and travel agents’ performance. In addition, the study investigates how employee’s absorptive capacity moderates the effects of managers’ competencies on knowledge received by the employees and moderates the effects of knowledge received by the employees on travel agents’ performance.

A positivist research philosophy was adopted with a quantitative approach, in which quantitative data were gathered based on questionnaires to tackle different stages of the study. To test the hypotheses, a self-administrated face-to-face survey of about 42 questions, launched on November 7, 2016, was used to compile response from top and medium management Category A travel agents operating in Egypt.

Based on a sample of 577 travel agents’ frontline employees, the results showed that the three dimensions of travel agents’ competencies have a positive effect on knowledge received by the employee. Findings further indicated that knowledge received by employee mediates the link between these three competencies and travel agents’ performance. The link between the competencies and knowledge received by the employee was found to be positively moderated by employee absorptive capacity. Moreover, these findings suggested that the relationship between knowledge received and travel agents’ performance is stronger when employees’ absorptive capacity is greater.

This study is bound by certain limitations that also provide fertile grounds for further research. First, the study examined how an employee’s absorptive capacity moderates the effects of managers’ competencies on knowledge received by the employees and moderates the effects of knowledge received by the employees on travel agents’ performance. However, innovation as a dependent variable can be investigated. Second, one limitation is that the study is restricted to Category A travel agents only in Greater Cairo. Third, examining the antecedents of ability, motivation and opportunity seeking to transfer knowledge is also important.

It is important for travel agents, owners, managers and employees to acknowledge absorptive capacity as a critical component for organizations to sustain, grow and compete. Travel agents can also take steps to develop their employees’ absorptive capacity. Doing so would further enhance the success of knowledge, employees and travel agents’ performance. Also, travel agents’ top management has to ensure their employees’ absorbing knowledge, identifying and recognizing external knowledge, processing and understanding it, combining it with existing knowledge and applying the new knowledge to commercial ends. Hence, the development of absorptive capacity contributes to a travel agent’s achievement of competitive advantage.

This study contributes to the literature by expanding the extant literature on knowledge transfer and absorptive capacity by investigating the influence of travel agents’ manager competencies – ability, motivation and opportunity seeking – for knowledge transfer in the Egyptian context. In addition, it investigates the direct effects of the three dimensions of travel agents’ manager competencies – ability, motivation and opportunity seeking – for knowledge transfer. Finally, the paper investigates how employee’s absorptive capacity moderates the effects of managers’ competencies on knowledge received by the employees and moderates the effects of knowledge received by the employees on travel agents’ performance

The purpose of this paper is to explore the black box between high-performance work systems (HPWS) and innovation performance in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Through application of the ability, motivation and opportunity (AMO) framework, the study examines the mediating roles of innovation-specific ability, motivation and voice behaviors between HPWS and SMEs’ innovation performance.

The hypotheses are tested on data collected through a self-administered questionnaire from 237 SMEs in Pakistan.

Findings indicate that human capital, motivation and employee voice fully mediate the relationship between HPWS and innovation performance in SMEs.

The cross-sectional research design and self-reported measures warrant caution for the interpretation of findings. Future research may consider a longitudinal research design and objective measures.

SMEs need to invest in the adoption and implementation of HPWS that will develop innovation-specific abilities, motivation and voice behaviors simultaneously among employees that will lead to higher innovation performance.

This is the first study of its kind utilizing an AMO framework to investigate the underlying mechanism through which HPWS affect innovation performance in SMEs.

Employees need a sustainable career to prolong their working lives. The ability, motivation and opportunity to work form an important basis for sustainable careers across the lifespan. However, over the lifespan of their careers employees are likely to experience several career shocks (e.g. becoming chronically ill or being fired) which might result in unsustainable trajectories. This study aims to contribute to the literature on sustainable careers by unraveling the process through which careers shocks relate to career (un)sustainability and what role perceptions of human resource practices play in the process.

Thirty-three in-depth retrospective interviews with participants of 50 years and older were conducted and analyzed using a template analysis.

Results showed that career shocks influence career sustainability through a process of changes in demands or changes in resources, which in turn, relate to changes in person–job fit. When person-job–fit diminished, the ability, motivation and opportunity to continue working decreased, whereas when person–job fit improved, the ability, motivation and opportunity to continue working improved as well. Organizations appear to be able to diminish the negative consequences of career shocks by offering job resources such as HR practices in response to career shocks.

A limitation of this study is the retrospective nature of the interviews, which could have resulted in recollection bias.

This study gives HRM practitioners insight into the HR practices that are effective in overcoming career shocks.

This study extends existing literature by including career shocks as possible predictors of sustainable careers.

While prior research suggests that human resource management (HRM) practices are crucial drivers of a firms' intellectual capital, few studies have tried to deconstruct this relationship and investigate how HRM practices specifically affect intellectual capital resources. Furthermore, prior research treated this relationship as universal and rarely tried to introduce important contingent factors that may alter the mechanisms involved in how HRM practices influence firms' intellectual capital. In this study, the authors examine the relationships between the ability-, motivation- and opportunity-enhancing dimensions of HRM systems and human, social and structural capital and investigate how companies' codification and personalization knowledge management (KM) strategies may alter these relationships.

The data were collected using a telephone survey of 215 knowledge-intensive companies operating in Russia. The paper utilizes partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS–SEM) to evaluate the measurement model and test hypothesized relationships.

The findings indicate positive relationships between ability-enhancing practices and firms' human capital between motivation-enhancing practices and firms' human and social capital and between opportunity-enhancing practices and firms' social and structural capital. The authors’ results reveal the limited moderating role of KM strategies in the relationships between HRM and intellectual capital. While a personalization strategy had no impact on any of the proposed relationships, a codification strategy positively moderated the relationship between opportunity-enhancing HRM practices and firms' structural capital.

The study expands the debates in strategic HRM literature by looking “inside” the HRM–intellectual capital relationship. Additionally, the authors’ findings reveal the complexity of the contingent effect that KM strategies of codification and personalization have on the relationship between HRM practices and intellectual capital. Although some of the relationships were not moderated by the KM strategy of the firm, the HRM–intellectual capital relationship cannot be considered fully universal.

This paper aims to develop a model for selecting project team members. In this model, while knowledge sharing among individuals is maximized, the project costs and the workload balance among employees are also optimized.

The problem of project team formation is formulated as a fuzzy multi-objective 0-1 integer programming model. Afterward, to deal with uncertainty in the decision-making on the candidates’ abilities and the project requirements, the fuzzy multi-objective chance-constrained programming approach is adopted. Finally, by combining the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II and the fuzzy simulation algorithms, a method is proposed to solve the problem.

The computational results of the proposed model in a case study of project team formation in a large Iranian company from the shipbuilding industry evidently demonstrated its effectiveness in providing Pareto-optimal solutions for the team composition.

Seemingly for the first time, this paper develops a model to optimize knowledge sharing and improve the project efficiency through the selection of appropriate project team members.

This 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.

Based on research from the manufacturing industry in Pakistan, the authors find that high-involvement HR practices have a direct positive impact on individual employee functional flexibility and innovative workplace behavior

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.

This paper aims to examine how high involvement HRM (HIHRM), technology adaptation and innovativeness influence employees to respond to technology innovation performance – that is, radical innovation performance and incremental innovation performance – in distinct ways.

The purposive judgmental sample technique is used to assess the perceptions of 545 IT employees in Bangladesh's ready-made garment (RMG) industry. The partial least square-structural equation modeling (SEM-PLS) method is applied to analyze and interpret the data.

Findings of the analysis show that HIHRM, technology adaptation and innovativeness influence employees to exhibit technology innovation performance. Furthermore, both technology adaptation and innovativeness show the significant mediating effects between HIHRM and technology innovation performance.

First, this study’s findings contribute to HIHRM and technology innovation performance within the context of the resource-based theory. Second, the RMG organizations would acknowledge the role of HIHRM on employee technology adaptability and innovation capability in this regard. A future study might point to the models' ability to create the best work environments, which can help organizations to boost employee productivity through adaptation and innovation.

The study would offer a distinctive perspective on higher-order HIHRM and how they affect IT employees in RMG organizations in Bangladesh that could be approached in other labor-intensive and developing nations. This study also expands the research on technology adaptation and innovativeness by exploring the mediating roles between HIHRM and employee technology innovation performance in the organization.

Following a social identity approach focussed in the Greek healthcare sector, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating effects of social identification on the relationship between high-performance work systems (HPWS) and psychological empowerment, and the mediating role of psychological empowerment between HPWS and quality of patient care.

Partial least squares-structural equation modeling was used in a sample of 297 nurses, doctors, and allied health professionals across seven hospitals in Greece.

The findings suggest that HPWS has a strong effect on healthcare professionals’ social identification, which in turn partially mediates the relationship between HPWS and psychological empowerment. In addition, psychological empowerment indirectly mediates the relationship between HPWS and quality of patient care.

The findings not only validate previous studies’ conclusions, but also provide evidence for the potential fruitfulness of the HPWS approach from a social identity perspective. In addition, it is also confirmed that without the presence of psychological empowerment, HPWS may have limited impact on the quality of patient care.

Although HPWS have been generally connected with positive employee attitudes and behaviors, few studies choose to follow a social identity approach in examining these relationships. Finally, this study confirms the argument that HPWS can be a fruitful approach even in a country severely affected by Europe’s debt crisis over the last five years.

This paper aims to integrate existing thinking and provide new insights into the complexity of behaviours to improve understanding of the nature of these behaviours. This paper expands social marketing theory by introducing the Motivation–Opportunity–Ability–Behaviour (MOAB) framework to assist in understanding the nature of social marketing behaviours by extending the Motivation–Opportunity–Ability (MOA) framework.

This is a conceptual paper that proposes the MOAB framework to understand the complexity of behaviours.

This new tool will provide social marketers with an improved understanding of the differences between behaviours targeted by social marketers. Specifically, it provides a definition and application of complexity in social marketing that will facilitate the development of consumer insights and subsequent social marketing programs that more sufficiently account for the complexity of target behaviours.

This proposed MOAB framework offers a foundation for future research to expand upon. Further research is recommended to empirically test the proposed framework.

This paper seeks to advance the theoretical base of social marketing by providing new insights to understand the nature of the behaviour in social marketing to assist social marketers to move beyond attempts to treat all behaviours as if they are the same.

Several studies have explored the relationships among the multiple dimensions of knowledge governance mechanisms (KGMs) and knowledge sharing. However, knowledge governance issues and knowledge transfer processes remain under-researched. The empirical results of the relationships among KGMs, motivations to share knowledge and knowledge sharing behavior remain inconsistent. This paper aims at re-examining the mediating effects of knowledge sharing motivations and knowledge sharing opportunities on the relationship between KGMs and knowledge sharing behavior of repatriates at multinational corporations.

Survey data were collected from 140 repatriates from 66 multinational companies that operated in five different geographic locations. Structural equation modelling was used to assess the research model.

The empirical results indicate the mediating roles of knowledge sharing motivation and opportunity in the relationship between KGMs and the knowledge sharing behavior of repatriates. Two sets of KGMs – formal and informal mechanisms – have significant influence on knowledge sharing motivation and opportunity.

This investigation focuses on the functions of KGMs that facilitate the knowledge sharing behavior of repatriates. The contextual effects of task-level, firm-level, and external environmental characteristics on knowledge sharing may need further studies to substantiate.

This study argues that even when employees are encouraged and rewarded by extrinsic and intrinsic motivations to share knowledge, effective knowledge sharing would not necessarily be guaranteed. This paper offers a conceptual framework where knowledge sharing motivations and opportunities simultaneously play the mediating roles in a successful knowledge sharing. The framework associates KGMs with knowledge sharing behavior and echoes the growing acknowledgement of the need for additional research on micro-foundations of knowledge sharing to complement the macro research.