Search results

This study aims to explore the relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ innovative work behaviour (IWB), additionally examining the mediating effect of psychological empowerment.

The study is based on a cross-sectional design, data being collected from 139 employees through the following structured questionnaires: Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, IWB and psychological empowerment instrument.

The findings revealed a positive and significant relationship between transformational leadership and both IWB and psychological empowerment, as well as the fact that transformational leadership, through psychological empowerment, fosters IWB.

One of the main weaknesses of this study is the use of a cross-sectional design, which does not allow for an assessment of the cause–effect relation. Also, using a self-reported questionnaire might have brought common method bias.

The paper shows that, by creating a greater sense of empowerment, leaders could have a higher positive effect on employee’s levels of IWB. Moreover, empowerment acts as one of the most important and effective processes within the transformational leadership framework in fostering innovation among followers.

This study extends the empirical research on transformational leadership and its influence on employees’ work attitudes. Given the scant research on the role of the psychological empowerment, the results of this study confirm not only its mediating role but also the need for further studies in this direction.

The purpose of this paper is to show the way the human dimension influences the adoption and usage of the knowledge transfer in non-profit organizations (NGOs). Previous research on the topic focused mainly on the organizational and technical aspects (i.e. organizational culture, processes and technology), lacking a consistent approach of the human dimension. Therefore, this paper goes beyond the multiplying effect of the organizational and technical factors in the development of knowledge transfer and investigates the impact of human beliefs and actions on the practices of knowledge sharing in the NGOs.

This paper investigates the above-mentioned topics of the importance of the human aspect in the knowledge sharing adoption, and development of the NGOs by use of a cross-cultural study based on a questionnaire that conducted in Romania and Greece.

This study emphasizes the importance of the human dimension in the practice of the knowledge sharing of the non-profit organizations, proving that the adoption of such practices depends on the beliefs of the NGOs employees on the topic, and on their degree of exposure to international activities.

The results of this study provide valuable incentive to the managers of the non-profit organizations to pay more attention to the beliefs and values of their employees in adopting knowledge sharing practices.

This paper is valuable to the academics and practitioners in search of reliable data on the impact of the human dimension on the adoption and usage of knowledge management in the Third Sector, filling an existing gap of the literature on the topic.

The purpose of the present study is intended to fill a research gap, by advancing a conceptual model which brings novel insights on the relationships between socially responsible consumption and consumer’s need for uniqueness.

Relying on a questionnaire-based survey for data collection, the proposed model was tested using the partial least squares (PLS) algorithm for structural equation modeling (SEM), which allows the assessment of the models containing both formative and reflective constructs.

The research found that 73.7 per cent of the variance in the consumer’s belief in the importance of personal power to make a difference through socially responsible choices is explained by the proposed model. Moreover, four of the five factors of socially responsible consumption fully mediate the positive effect of the consumer’s need for uniqueness on the importance attached to personal socially responsible choices in driving positive change.

The study avails a phenomenological perspective by offering novel insights from a Romanian sample. The limitation associated with a country-centric vision is compensated through the contextual analysis and integration of a new point of reference in the overall framework of socially responsible consumption.

The evidence is indicative of new consumption insights and should be closely considered by companies.

The study draws upon a conceptual model integrating the relationships between socially responsible consumption and a psychological characteristic – the consumer’s need for uniqueness – which has been never tested as such before.

The purpose of our chapter is to explore the extent to which online repositories of stories related to corporate social responsibility (CSR), reported by companies, represent a tool which can contribute, combined with the potential pressure of the social networks, to perpetuating and increasing such reporting behaviour.

In order to explore this, we have analysed the CSR stories of companies published on the largest online repository from Romania, that is, the website www.responsabilitatesociala.ro. We explore two research questions: Could a repository site facilitate that more and more companies report their CSR activities? and Will a company that presented one case at some point in time present more cases in the next reporting period? For this purpose we have used as method the content analysis having as counting unit each article published and each company which, at some point, published something. Our analysis covered the articles published within 2006–2012 and thus we have used 1121 articles/case studies.

In terms of findings, we conclude that such online repository leads to an important increase in the number of companies having their CSR activities published, although such increase has not been steady. In our view such reporting started a trend. Some companies, after being published in a certain year may have not reported the following year, but nonetheless, new companies decided to publish about their CSR activities each year. In the case of the second question, we could not determine a particular pattern. The number of companies which published, at least in 6 out of the 7 years we have analysed, has been quite low – 12, and there have been big discrepancies between years and between articles per company.

The main limitation of our chapter is that we could not correlate the articles published with other variables, such as: reporting on Facebook and on the official webpage or the extent to which CSR managers from companies think that such repositories have exerted any type of good pressure on them to publish and report their activities.

This approach is important for CSR managers and other stakeholders – such repositories can be both a source of inspiration and a good practice model. One can ‘show, view and shop’ CSR activities in one stop online and take the example further. We believe that this is something specific for all countries, where CSR entered the business as a public relations (PR) concept and then evolved.

The value of our chapter consists in exploring such simple and on-hand online repositories and finding issues of interest for further research.

The current study has a two-fold purpose. Firstly, it aims to analyze the extent to which knowledge management (KM) affects the performance of individuals (task and contextual) on the one hand and that of organizations (product or service, perceived and financial) on the other hand. Secondly, it proposes to investigate the mediating effect of motivation and innovation in the relationship between KM and individual and organizational performance.

Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was employed in this study, with mediation analysis performed using advanced PLS-SEM techniques. A total of 1,284 respondents from organizations in both the public and private sectors were included in the sample.

The findings emphasize that KM has a more significant direct effect on individual performance compared to organizational performance. Concurrently, in terms of indirect influence, it is found that KM, through motivation and innovation, has a positive and significant effect on both individual and organizational performances, with a higher influence on the organizational one.

The originality of the work can be noted in designing two different structural models to represent the proposed relationships at the individual and organizational levels. These findings could provide organizational decision makers with empirical evidence, helping them (1) internalize the significance of the KM process in organizations as well as its subsequent effects on individual and organizational performance and (2) identify factors that mediate variable relationships.

This paper aims to make an analysis of investment behaviour in mutual funds, by looking at different investment decision influencers and trying to identify the extent to which the investment decision is knowledge-based. The paper has three main purposes, namely, to assess the degree to which the considered factors influence investment decision-making in young capital markets from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE); to compare the investment behaviour in the three considered countries; and to characterise investment behaviour in periods of economic turbulence.

The researchers considered a model of investment behaviour comprising six influencing factors. Inferential statistics through multiple linear regression was applied using the MATLAB R2014a software. The decision to invest was measured by the flow of new capital attracted by the fund (dependent variable) and the considered influencing factors (independent variables) were: the size of the fund, the risk associated to the fund, the growth of the fund, the growth of the fund category, the performance of the fund in its category. The research was conducted in Romania, Slovakia and Hungary. The period of study included the global economic crisis of 2007-2008.

The results illustrated that all considered factors do have an influence on the investment behaviour of investors in CEE, but with different levels of impact. The study concludes that the investment decision is partially knowledge-based, as investors in the region consider only some of the available information when making the decision to invest. Investment behaviour of investors in CEE is rather similar than dissimilar when deciding to invest in mutual funds. However, based on the differences between countries, it can be stated that the Hungarian investor is more mature and more informed than the others, when making investment decisions.

The study contributes to the exiting literature through the analysis of investment behaviour in young capital markets that are less studied in the literature. The limited number of studies considering mutual funds, usually comprise one fund category, while the present research considers all five most prevalent mutual funds categories for the studied period. It also contributed by collecting data from a less studied geographical region, CEE with three specific case studies, namely, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary that are looked at in a comparative manner.