Influence of national and engineering culture on team role selection

Engineering education is an emerging field of research. Due to its applied nature, recent theoretical developments have been followed by empirical evidence and interdisciplinary research. The present study attempted to describe the team roles assumed by members of project teams composed of young engineering students. The study was conducted in Pakistan by using the Belbin Team Role Self Perception Inventory. It was found that young Pakistani engineers assumed the roles of implementer, coordinator, shaper and team worker. This study attempts to understand role choices through the framework of national cultural dimensions proposed by Hofstede and engineering education culture offered by Godfrey and Parker. The study strongly recommends that engineering curriculum should incorporate activities which could foster creativity among engineers. Moreover, engineering students should be motivated to innovate through collaboration in a problem and project based environment, which is seriously lacking in engineering education of Pakistan.     

The effect of the dynamics of knowledge base complexity on Schumpeterian patterns of innovation: the upstream petroleum industry

This article analyzes important changes in technological innovation in the upstream petroleum industry. It provides evidence that shifts in sectoral patterns of innovation over the petroleum industry's lifecycle from the 1970s up to 2005 were dependent on the dynamics of knowledge base complexity (KBC), a key dimension of an industry's technological regime. Accordingly, observed shifts in innovation patterns are understood to be the aggregated strategic response of industry innovators to changes in the technological regime. The article proposes a quantitative method for exploring KBC and Schumpeterian patterns of innovation, and interactions between the two at the industry level. As the industry evolved, its knowledge base moved to higher orders of complexity creating a shift in the Schumpeterian pattern of innovation. Increased KBC was found to alter Schumpeterian patterns from Mark I toward a ‘modified’ Mark II. Instead of coming predominantly from ‘traditional’ established oil operators, technological innovation was increasingly triggered by a new class of emergent integrated service companies – ‘second tier’ systems integrators of the upstream sector able to cope with increased KBC.     

Personality and balanced psychological contracts: The mediating roles of epistemic curiosity and rule‐following behavior

This study extends prior research on the relationships between personality constructs and types of psychological contracts by exploring how the Big Five traits predict balanced psychological contracts. Further, we determine whether epistemic curiosity and rule‐following behavior are key mediators of the proposed relationships. We tested our proposed hypotheses using three‐wave time‐lagged data from 469 respondents. The results indicated that openness to experience was positively associated and both conscientiousness and neuroticism were negatively associated with balanced contracts. Extraversion and agreeableness were not associated with balanced contracts. We also established the mediating role of epistemic curiosity in the relationships between personality traits and balanced contracts, but there was no support for the mediating role of rule‐following behavior in the present study. These findings have important implications for managers and organizations in terms of selecting the right person for a job (person‐job fit) and ensuring employee retention (person‐organization fit), hence having a bottom‐line effect on firm performance. Future research directions are also discussed.     

Board gender diversity and dividend policy in Australian listed firms: the effect of ownership concentration

Asia Pacific Journal of Management - We examine the association between board gender diversity and corporate dividend payout. Our results suggest that although board gender diversity impacts...     

Global Insights on TMT Gender Diversity in Controversial Industries: A Legitimacy Perspective

Journal of Business Ethics - Firms in controversial industries such as tobacco, alcohol, gambling, weapon, and nuclear power suffer organizational legitimacy problems. These firms, therefore, adopt...     

Net-zero emission targets and the role of managerial environmental awareness,customer pressure,and regulatory control toward environmental performance

To avoid the worst effects of global warming, countries agreed to limit warming below 2.0°C and ideally to 1.5°C preindustrial level. This requires countries to drop half of their greenhouse gas emission by 2030 and reach net-zero emission by 2050. In this regard, current study explores the role of green production as a mediator in the impact of managerial environmental awareness, customer pressure, and regulatory control on environmental performance. The data collected from 381 managers was analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) technique. Results indicate that customer pressure, regulatory control, and managerial environmental awareness play a pivotal role toward green production, whereas only managerial environmental awareness among them directly influences environmental performance. Green production fully mediates the relationship from customer pressure and regulatory control to environmental performance. However, it partially mediates the relation between managerial environmental awareness and environmental performance. Similarly, the importance of green production for environmental performance is highlighted.     

An empirical analysis of social media usage,political learning and participation among youth: a comparative study of Indonesia and Pakistan

Quality & Quantity - Youth participation in political matters has gained attention among people around the globe where youth involvement in certain political activities has been witnessed (of...     

Effects of farm credit access on agricultural commercialization in Ghana: Empirical evidence from the northern Savannah ecological zone

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how farmers' access to credit affects agricultural commercialization in the northern Savannah ecological zone of Ghana. The study uses data from the Ghana Feed the Future baseline survey involving a total sample of 2,962 farm households. The study employs endogenous switching regression for ordered outcomes to account for endogeneity and self‐selection bias in the decision to access credit. The results from the estimations revealed that education, age, nonfarm business equipment, multiple crop production, and group membership are the variables influencing farmers' access to credit. Agricultural commercialization is determined by gender, age, marital status, household size, farm size, nonfarm business equipment, means of transport, group membership, assets index, multiple crop production, and location. In terms of causal effect, the results show that credit access stimulates higher commercialization. Thus policies that enhance farmers' access to credit are more likely to be successful in getting them to commercialize.     

Institutional stakeholdings and better-informed traders at earnings announcements

Utama and Cready [Utama, S., Cready, W.M., 1997. Institutional ownership, differential predisclosure precision and trading volume at announcement dates. Journal of Accounting and Economics 24, 129–150] use total institutional ownership to proxy for the proportion of better-informed traders, an important determinant of trading around earnings announcements. We argue that institutions holding small stakes cannot justify the fixed cost of developing private predisclosure information. Also, institutions with large stakes generally do not trade around earnings announcements since they are dedicated investors or face regulations that make informed trading difficult. However, institutions holding medium stakes have incentives to develop private predisclosure information and trade on it; we show that their ownership is a finer proxy for the proportion of better-informed traders at earnings announcements.     

Attitude toward business environment of auditing,corporate governance and balance between auditing and marketing

The aim of this study was to evaluate the attitude of Iranian auditors toward balance between auditing and marketing with respect to two important components of audit process such as business environment of auditing and corporate governance. The analysis is based on survey data from 257 respondents. To achieve the research aims, we specified four hypotheses based on social theories. The results of this study show that the auditors having positive attitude toward marketing and those who consider it as significant are able, to a large extent, balance spent time for inherent auditing tasks and marketing activities. In addition, the results show that an increase by a unit for the attitude toward business environment results in 0.489 unit increase in attitude toward balance of time spent on marketing and auditing activities, of which 0.396 is direct impact and 0.093 is indirect impact.