How knowledge management mediates the relationship between environment and organizational structure

Literature examining how knowledge management (KM) capability helps organizational structures cope with uncertainty is limited. Thus, this study builds and tests an integrated model to investigate the relationship among environmental uncertainty, KM capability, and organizational structure. Data from 161 firms were collected and analyzed. The results from structural equation model analysis support a mediating KM capability between environmental uncertainty and structural attributes. Environmental uncertainty tends to require firms to increase their KM capability, which in turn manifests itself in structural changes.     

Hope and positive affect mediating the authentic leadership and creativity relationship

The study analyzes how authentic leadership (AL) predicts employees' creativity both directly and through the mediating role of employees' positive affect and hope. Two hundred and three employees working in Portuguese retail organizations participate in the research. Employees report their hope and positive affective states, as well as the AL of their supervisors. Supervisors report the employees' creativity. The main findings are: (a) AL predicts employees' creativity, both directly and through the mediating role of employees' hope; (b) AL also predicts employees' positive affect, which in turn predicts employees' hope and, thus, creativity. The study enriches the understanding of the processes through which AL improves employees' creativity, and provides valuable insights for both scholars and practitioners. By promoting AL, and employees' hope and positive affect, organizations may increase employees' creative performance, creativity being an important path to organizational performance.     

How do trade and financial integration affect the relationship between growth and volatility?

The influential work of Ramey and Ramey [Ramey, G., Ramey, V.A., 1995. Cross-country evidence on the link between volatility and growth. American Economic Review 85, 1138-1151 (December).] highlighted an empirical relationship that has now come to be regarded as conventional wisdom—that output volatility and growth are negatively correlated. We reexamine this relationship in the context of globalization—a term typically used to describe the phenomenon of growing international trade and financial integration that has intensified since the mid-1980s. Using a comprehensive new data set, we document that, while the basic negative association between growth and volatility has been preserved during the 1990s, both trade and financial integration significantly weaken this negative relationship. Specifically, we find that, in a regression of growth on volatility and other controls, the estimated coefficient on the interaction between volatility and trade integration is significantly positive. We find a similar, although less robust, result for the interaction of financial integration with volatility.     

How happiness mediates the organizational virtuousness and affective commitment relationship

Recent moral and financial collapse of high profile organizations around the world led the business community, the popular and business press, and researchers to rediscover the worthiness of organizations' virtues. Aiming to contribute to this momentum, this empirical study investigates how perceptions of organizational virtuousness (OV) predict affective well-being (AWB) and affective commitment (AC). Two hundred five individuals participate. The findings show that perceptions of OV predict AC both directly and through the mediating role of AWB. The study suggests that fostering organizational virtuousness (e.g., through honesty, interpersonal respect, and compassion; combining high standards of performance with a culture of forgiveness and learning from mistakes) improves employees' AWB and promotes a more committed workforce. Considering these findings and mirroring the growing contributions of the positive psychology, positive organizational behavior, and positive organizational scholarship movements, the study suggests that a “positive-people-management” perspective should be considered, both by practitioners and scholars.     

Store format choice in an evolving market: role of affect,cognition and involvement

Store choice has been studied extensively in the literature, but store format choice has had limited research attention. The store format choice for bulk grocery purchase being a rational context is well conceptualized in the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) framework. Attitude behaviour linkages are well explored but there is rare consensus on the components of attitude, their interrelationship and resultant impact on conation. The Theory of Reasoned Action has evolved over time to incorporate perceived behavioral control and past behavior to improve its explanatory capability as TPB; however, it has maintained its unidimensionalist approach and has not tested affect and cognition independently for its impact on behavior. This paper explores a Converging framework of the Affect and Cognition components of attitude and tests their independent impact on store format choice behaviour. The results indicate that Affect operates independently and has stronger impact on format choice especially in more evolved and familiarized contexts whereas cognitive evaluation is strong in relatively newer formats. There seems to be an interplay between Cognition and Affect over time with cognition transitioning into affect as familiarity with choices increases.     

组织认同受传统文化影响吗?——中国员工认同感知途径分析

This paper explores the information perception channels of organizational identification (OID) in the context of Chinese traditional culture. Drawing on the grounded theory, the authors conducted a survey on employees in Shandong, Henan, Beijing, Guangzhou, Gansu, Jiangsu and Taiwan, and developed a five-factor scale for information perception channels of OID consisting of leader modeling, consideration for subordinates, external encouragement, rationalizing norms and rules, and behavioral consistency. Results of regression analysis show that all of these five factors have significant effects on employees’ OID, particularly the factors of external encouragement, behavioral consistency, and consideration for subordinates. Translated and revised from Zhongguo Gongye Jingji 中国工业经济 (China Industrial Economics), 2008, (6): 118–126     

How gender and financial self‐efficacy influence investment risk taking

Evidence shows alarming numbers of US workers nearing retirement insufficiently save for this next life stage. Moreover, many women invest too conservatively. This finding is of particular concern as women typically live longer than men do, and thus, rely on accumulated savings for longer periods of time. This study extends work in the psychology of investing by examining the relationship between gender and investment risk and the role financial self‐efficacy (FSE) plays. Data collected from 182 US student subjects tested the hypotheses that women make less risky investments than men do and that FSE is positively related to the level of risk taken within investment portfolios. The results not only supported the hypotheses but also the analysis shows that FSE might account for the frequently observed gender difference associated with greater financial risk taking.     

Do retail alliances enhance customer experience? Examining the relationship between alliance value and customer satisfaction with the alliance

Abstract

This article evaluates the role of customers in the alliance equation. Using a combination of survey and experimental data, we investigate the role of value offered by retail alliances on customer satisfaction with the alliance. We find that customer value plays a mediating role in the relationship between customer experience with the alliance and customer satisfaction with the alliance. Results also show that the nature of this relationship differs based on the type of value offered by the alliance. Cognitive processing plays a more significant role when the alliance is of a functional nature, while affect plays a more significant role when the retail alliance is of a hedonic nature.     

How uncivil customers corrode the relationship between frontline employees and retailers

This study investigates the effects of customers’ uncivil treatments on frontline retail employees’ emotions, deviant behaviors and relationship with the retail organization. Our theoretical model is based on both marketing and personnel management literatures. 415 frontline retailing American employees answered our questionnaire. Employees treated uncivilly by customers feel angry but have to hide their negative emotions, which leads them to emotional exhaustion and deviant behaviors. Paradoxically, employees’ strong commitment to their retailing organization brings about more deviant behaviors. We propose some managerial strategies to cope with uncivil customers, as well as future research on this important and under-researched topic.     

How tensions between specific Chinese and American interests affect China's entry into the WTO

The USA regularly stresses that it is in favour of China's admission to the World Trade Organization, given the country's growing network of international relations and its increasing political and economic significance. China's own political leadership has been driving home its demand to be readmitted to the GATT (WTO) since as long ago as July 1986. Yet in spite of the apparent concurrence of interests the two countries convey to the outside world, China's entry negotiations have not yielded any evidence of a positive outcome.     

The Influence of Personality Traits on the Processing of Visual and Verbal Information

The purpose of this research is to investigate individuals' preferences for visual as opposed to verbal information and to explore how those preferences relate to processing style personality traits. In comparison to individuals with other processing style personality traits, individuals with a high need for cognition prefer to process verbal information while individuals with a high need for affect prefer to process visual information. Linking processing style personality traits with preferences for visual/verbal information increases our theoretical understanding and practical applicability of personality traits.     

论电子商务与物流互动影响

随着世界经济一体化,信息技术的高速发展,电子商务已经成为人们进行商务活动的新模式。如今越来越多的传统企业开始介入电子商务领域,然而在进行网上交易的同时却发现与物流相互影响,物流的快慢也成为电子商务能否顺利进行和发展的一个关键因素。     

如何构建公平与效率关系统一的新机制

公平和效率是衡量社会发展的不同尺度,公平尺度是衡量社会在同等地满足人的基本权利、实现人类共同解放所达到的水平;效率尺度是衡量一定社会在发展生产力方面所达到的水平.本文旨在寻求公平与效率关系如何统一的新机制以及如何构建这种关系统一的机制.     

Differences between workstations and keypad group support systems: Implications for keypad GSS facilitators

Organizations are successfully using group support systems (GSS) to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction in organizational meetings. Meeting success relies on making an appropriate match between group, taks, and technology. This responsibility often falls to the meeting facilitator. This article draws upon GSS and facilitation literature to develop a framework for the discussion of effective facilitation in workstation and keypad meeting environments. The article identifies differences between the systems and how they impact upon the behavior of the meeting facilitators and their choice of technology. Compensatory actions are proposed for keypad facilitators to address the lack of key workstation features. Keypad strengths are also identified to show the opportunities available to facilitators to maximize the benefits of using these GSS. Further, it is proposed that different types of GSS are not mutually exclusive and should be seen as complementary components of a suite of GSS tools designed to support organizational goals.     

How managerial attitudes toward the natural environment affect market orientation and innovation

This study investigates natural environmental attitude linkages held by strategic decision makers and hypothesizes that the interaction between market orientation and managerial natural environmental attitudes serves to enhance the effect of market orientation on firm innovativeness. Using questionnaire responses from 284 owners or chief executive officers residing in the food processing industry, the findings establish evidence of (1) a positive linkage between market orientation and firm innovativeness, and (2) the moderating effect of managerial attitudes of top managers toward the natural environmental in the market orientation to firm innovativeness relationship. The results provide insight into the nature of the cultural values on which a market orientation is based in relation to the natural environment.     

The dualistic regulatory effect of passion on the relationship between fear of failure and negative affect: Insights from facial expression analysis

Across two studies, we theorize and empirically investigate passion as a moderator of the negative affective consequences of fear of failure in early-stage entrepreneurship. We test our hypotheses in two field studies of naturally occurring affective events—namely, pitching competitions—and we complement self-reported measures of negative affect with physio-psychological measures obtained from analyzing entrepreneurs' facial expressions. The results confirm that in failure-relevant situations, dispositional fear of failure may lead to higher negative affect depending on the dualistic regulatory effect of passion—harmonious passion dampens the influence of fear of failure on negative affect (Studies 1 and 2), while obsessive passion magnifies this effect in Study 1 but dampens it in Study 2, thus showing mixed evidence. Our work is one of the first to investigate how early-stage entrepreneurs experience negative affect during typical entrepreneurial events as a result of their dispositional traits and their type and level of passion.     

创业自我效能与企业家认知及创业行为关系研究

在对社会认知理论在创业研究领域应用新趋势及成果总结的基础上,对创业自我效能形成的认知因素及与创业行为的关联机制进行分析。提出了综合研究模型,提出沿着新创企业起源和发展历程中企业文化形成的脉络来考察创业自我效能对创业期企业家认知及创业行为的影响的研究思路,以及未来的研究趋势、研究重点与分析要点,为进一步深入到领导与学习过程,探索在此过程中企业家的认知发展,以及对创业绩效的影响奠定了理论基础。     

浅谈流行语与社会生活的关系

语言是人们用来交际的工具,也反映着当代社会的状况.语言随着时代的发展变化而变化并被不断创新、赋予新鲜的活力.一般认为流行语是指:"在一定时期、一定社会群体内被人们普遍使用的话语形式,一般为口语,带有一定的方言性,是一定时期内社会政治、经济、文化、环境及人们心理活动的综合产物,并在传媒的推动下盛行的词、短语、句子或特定的句子模式".当今网络信息技术的发展更加速了流行语的发展和流行,普遍被人们尤其是年轻人使用.     

Modeling the relationship between networking and firm performance

Network theory suggests that successful business ownership might depend on the ability of owners to gain access to resources not under their control in a cost effective way through networking. To date, however, there has been little empirical support for this proposition, particularly for established firms. The results of this study, based on a large longitudinal database, indicate a significant positive relationship between networking (particularly with formal networks such as external accountants) and both firm survival and, to a lesser extent, growth, but not ROE. Further, network intensity is found to be associated with survival, and network range with growth.     

In the eye of the beholder: How regulatory focus and self-efficacy interact in influencing opportunity recognition

Although there is evidence that regulatory focus is associated with opportunity exploitation, there is a lack of research examining its role at the early stages of opportunity recognition. The present study makes two major contributions to address this gap. First, we demonstrate that entrepreneurs' promotion focus is positively related to opportunity recognition, whereas prevention focus is not significantly related to opportunity recognition. Second, integrating two theories of self-regulation – regulatory focus theory and self-efficacy theory – our findings reveal that a high promotion focus compensates for entrepreneurs' low levels of creative and entrepreneurial self-efficacy in opportunity recognition. Our study extends extant cognitive theories of opportunity recognition.