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The motivational benefits of employee empowerment in facilitating organizational change and promoting organizational effectiveness are widely recognized. But often it is not appropriate for an organization to utilize a participative, collaborative, or consultative change‐management strategy. We examined the effects of a small empowerment during the radical and directively‐managed transformation of 52 recently‐acquired branches of a large regional bank. Our findings indicate that even when used in conjunction with an autocratic change‐management strategy, significant benefits can be derived from seemingly minor opportunities for employee empowerment.

Examines an innovative first step which one organization took on the road to employee empowerment. States that although this first step was a small one, it resulted in large benefits to the organization. Reveals that this field study was conducted during the information system conversion phase of a larger organizational change, at 52 recently‐acquired branches of a $40‐billion interstate bank. Discovers that the payoffs were surprisingly large when employees are given a small empowering opportunity just before their training. Indicates that empowered employees are more able to adapt to change and less likely to resist it, and their need for control is being met through their empowerment, rather than by their resistance. Finds that even in small quantities, empowerment can be a large contributor to success. Also believes that small, low‐cost empowerments with large payoffs can almost always be found.

Provides an introduction to EDI for those managers who are new to the field and wish to know more about it. Covers what EDI is, how it works and the technology involved, and provides a comprehensive account of the development, implementation and use of EDI. Gives guidelines for the successful adoption of EDI, from planning, analysis and design to construction, installation and operations, and lists critical success factors for EDI projects.

Risk‐related attitudes are important in today's business environment because as organisations become flattened decisions are pushed down in the hierarchy and a greater percentage of the individuals in the organisation must become proficient decision makers [16]. Risk preference is important because recent work shows that: (1) as risk tolerance increases so does the individual's effectiveness in some decision‐making activities [6], and that (2) self confidence is related to risk taking [8]. This study was designed to examine the relationships among information‐system‐related knowledge and experience, confidence (i.e. personal prospects), risk preference (i.e. planning horizon), and risk‐taking propensity (i.e. utility for risk).

This work shows how empowerment of the employee during the planning and implementation of the training programme contributes to the success of the entire organizational transformation programme. We conducted a study while a major bank attempted to achieve an organizational transformation. We studied the effect of the training versus training and empowerment (i.e. self‐scheduling of their training) on the employee′s satisfaction with training, motivation towards the transformation and satisfaction with the transformation. We show that user participation in appropriate training‐related activities provided the employees with a chance to feel empowered. Moreover, such a feeling of empowerment contributed to the success of the organizational transformation because it resulted in increased employee motivation and satisfaction.

Rapidly changing business conditions make it difficult to see the future with any degree of certainty. Consequently, many firms have undertaken a thorough self‐examination and reworking of procedures and methods to position themselves to compete in the global marketplace of the 1990s. A crucial element in the changing and improving processes is raising the quality of the product or service the firm provides. Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems has a vested interest in changing to meet the new requirements of the aerospace industry and decided to re‐evaluate its business practices, with the goal of increasing productivity while simultaneously increasing quality. Management decided to conduct a large‐scale quality survey throughout the company to understand the company’s current level of quality and the quality perceptions among employees. Reports on the results of that study, with a brief description of the development of the quality survey instrument and the information discovered during the data analysis.

Risk is an inherent component of business transactions. Today's flattened business organisations are forcing strategic, risk‐related decisions farther down the organisational hierarchy (Richards et.al., 1996). Therefore, every business decision maker has to become proficient at factoring risk into the decision‐making process. How the risk level of the transaction affects the decision maker and the eventual decision is a function of that person's risk propensity. For senior managers in those flattened organisations facing the necessity of having less‐senior individuals making strategic decisions, the attitudes of those individuals toward risk is extremely important.

E‐commerce offers speed, convenience, and often cost‐effectiveness for today’s busy shoppers, but many e‐commerce sites are still too hard to use. The problem with e‐commerce sites is that the controls and organization are different for each site. This research investigates how an individual’s perceptions of key beliefs surrounding the use of the e‐commerce site with the standard user interface would influence the individual’s decision to accept these e‐commerce sites for online shopping purposes. This study applies the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) identifying components of usefulness and ease of use that predict user attitude toward the usage of the standard user interface. The research uses a Web‐based survey and employs TAM with path analysis to identify features of the standard user interface that might contribute to its usefulness and ease of use. It thus provides insights into the usefulness and ease of e‐commerce sites for developers, practitioners as well as researchers.

The creation of partnerships among companies, governments and universities can improve innovation and the technological development of institutions. As innovation is a multidimensional concept, more nuanced research is needed to identify, which dimensions of innovation firms should focus on them. This paper aims to investigate the influence of attitude to knowledge sharing (KS) factors, learning organization and creativity on the innovation in marketing biotechnology firms. So, the purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of learning organization, attitude to KS, creativity, information technology (IT) acceptance, KS culture and trust on the innovation by presenting a new framework and a model.

The structural equation modeling technique is used to examine the reliability and validity of the measurement of the provided model. Data were collected by questionnaires. A case study was carried out in 100 marketing biotechnology firms in the Tehran of Iran. In this paper, smart partial least squares 2.0 was used to evaluate the measurement.

The result showed that all hypotheses of this research are proved. Also, the results have shown that the attitude to KS, learning organization and creativity affect the innovation in marketing biotechnology firms. As an overall result, the managers should create an enhanced knowledge bank to increase and encourage the KS among employees, thus creating and enhancing innovation in organizations. Also, the results have shown that marketing shortages were mostly connected to access to human resources with related management and marketing experiences and were mainly felt by firms introducing discontinuous novelties.

The main limitation of this paper is that the sample was retrieved from 384 employees in 100 marketing biotechnology institutions. The larger number of samples can yield better results. Next, even though the respondents’ profiles indicated a high probability of them being cognizant of their organization’s efforts in inter-firm KS, learning, creativity and innovation with three or four respondent from each organization answering all questions for such complicated issues always poses the risk of measurement bias and inaccuracy. An ideal situation for future studies would be to pool and compare multiple respondents from the same organization to obtain a more comprehensive firm-level measurement. In addition, this study only surveyed and sampled biotech marketing companies in Iran. Therefore, the model should be examined using samples from other countries because the varieties of culture could have an impact on employee apprehensions. So, future researchers can test the measurement instrument in different countries and/or conduct large multi-national comparisons.

Successful marketing strategies depend very much on an organization’s ability to implement them. This paper provides an excellent study about the future of pharmaceutical KS and shows that innovation paths are linked with local and temporary occasions. Also, the results of this study provide valuable information in formulating marketing biotechnology programs. It is essential to study both economics and innovation for students and academics. The results also suggested that policies to increase economic research will also increase innovation. They could contain the consolidation of the legal framework and institutional resources for public organizations to protect intellectual properties. In general, for successful implementation of strategies an organization has to integrate KS, processes and IT.

The paper identifies the most critical factors in the innovation process of enterprizes in marketing biotechnology institutions. The implications derived from this study can shed new light upon policy-making both at the level of governance and in the management practice in Iran’s marketing biotechnology industry. Also, the paper increases understanding of the innovation process in Iran marketing biotechnology companies. This study contributes to innovating management research by offering a set of legal and dependable operational measures. These measures can help academics in theory analysis.

This is the first attempt examining the role of the learning organization, creativity and attitude to KS as a key contingency factor in innovation in Iran marketing biotechnology firms, an issue whose understanding is still developing in the literature. The paper adds to the body of knowledge by allowing better understanding the attitude toward KS and the influence of KS, learning and creativity on innovation. Previous studies did not investigate the KS in marketing biotechnology firms deeply, but, the present paper permits a more complete view on this topic. The guidelines are provided for the top directors to promote KS and innovation according to the research results. From a managerial point of view some critical elements, which are important for the success of KS and application of these elements for progressing institutional guidelines to develop KS, are considered. Theoretical foundations can be extracted from this study, and these foundations can be implemented to investigate connection in KS elements such as feasibilities processes and institution initiative abilities. So, the results could be suitable to managers when arranging an organization and shaping its culture to improve knowledge management.