Pavlos Dimitratos, Ioannis C. Thanos, Andreas Petrou and Vassilis M. Papadakis
Purpose – This chapter seeks to examine the relationship between three strategic decision-making processes (SDMPs) and international performance of small- and medium-sized…
Abstract
Purpose – This chapter seeks to examine the relationship between three strategic decision-making processes (SDMPs) and international performance of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Methodology/approach – Drawing on a sample of 528 SMEs based in four countries (United States, United Kingdom, Greece and Cyprus), the chapter explores the relationship between formalisation, (hierarchical) decentralisation, lateral communication and international performance. The chapter also investigates the moderating effects of dynamism on the aforementioned relationship.
Findings – Results indicate that formalisation and decentralisation have a positive effect on international performance; whereas lateral communication has no effect. Some evidence exists to support the moderating role of dynamism on the process–international performance link in that decentralisation produces positive effects in stable settings whereas lateral communication produces positive effects in dynamic ones.
Research limitations/implications – This chapter focuses on three SDMP dimensions and one characteristic of the external environment. Future studies are also needed to replicate the findings reported here in other national settings. Also, future studies should consider additional variables.
Practical implications – International performance of the SME can be influenced by how managers are involved in their SDMPs.
Social implications – Given the high role that SMEs have in modern economies for employment and growth, we identify SDMPs that are conducive to their international performance.
Originality/value – This study lies at the intersection of two streams of two complementary streams of research: strategic decision-making and international entrepreneurship. It is one of the first attempts to involve the SDMP stream of research in internationalisation.
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Seeks to investigate the extent to which CEOs shape the process of making strategic decisions (SDs). Despite the significant research interest in this topic, knowledge is still…
Abstract
Purpose
Seeks to investigate the extent to which CEOs shape the process of making strategic decisions (SDs). Despite the significant research interest in this topic, knowledge is still incomplete.
Design/methodology/approach
Using evidence from a sample of 107 SDs, studied in Greece, the present paper explores the influence of CEO personality and demographic characteristics on the process of making SDs. A number of environmental and internal organisational variables are used as control variables measuring the broader context.
Findings
The results suggest that the broader context is on average more influential than the CEO. However, the CEO's demographic characteristics appear to influence several process characteristics (i.e. rationality, hierarchical decentralisation and politicisation). CEO personality characteristics do not appear to have any significant influence on the process.
Research limitations/implications
This paper focuses on only a few personality and demographic characteristics. The use of a different set of CEO characteristics (e.g. functional specialisation, etc.) as well as the characteristics of the top management team is more than welcome. More empirical studies are needed to replicate and extend this study by examining variables not included here.
Practical implications
Conventional wisdom as well as recent empirical evidence holds that the management style of Greek companies tends to be rather centralised, and dominated by one powerful individual. The results contradict this belief. It seems that in order to survive and achieve long‐term viability, Greek companies were forced to introduce changes in their management style, including a more team‐based style of decision making. In such a context, personality characteristics of the CEO or any other single influential player may not decisively affect the SD process.
Originality/value
Few studies have examined empirically the influence of such a combination of factors on strategic decision processes.
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Said Elbanna, Ioannis C. Thanos and Vassilis M. Papadakis
The purpose of this paper is to enhance the knowledge of the antecedents of political behaviour. Whereas political behaviour in strategic decision-making (SDM) has received…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to enhance the knowledge of the antecedents of political behaviour. Whereas political behaviour in strategic decision-making (SDM) has received sustained interest in the literature, empirical examination of its antecedents has been meagre.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a constructive replication to examine the impact of three layers of context, namely, decision, firm and environment, on political behaviour. In Study 1, Greece, we gathered data on 143 strategic decisions, while in Study 2, Egypt, we collected data on 169 strategic decisions.
Findings
The evidence suggests that both decision-specific and firm factors act as antecedents to political behaviour, while environmental factors do not.
Practical implications
The findings support enhanced practitioner education regarding political behaviour and provide practitioners with a place from which to start by identifying the factors which might influence the occurrence of political behaviour in SDM.
Originality/value
The paper fills important gaps in the existing research on the influence of context on political behaviour and delineates interesting areas for further research.
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Ram Herkanaidu, Steven M. Furnell and Maria Papadaki
The purpose of this study is to determine effective online safety awareness education for young people in less developed countries. The research followed an explanatory mixed…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to determine effective online safety awareness education for young people in less developed countries. The research followed an explanatory mixed methods design starting with an online survey (quantitative element) and then interesting or anomalous findings were followed up with one-on-one interviews (qualitative element). The data gathered on the online habits and views of young people were fed into the Young People Online Model. It was also used to create online safety workshops. The standout issue from this research is the prevalence of cyberbullying, and this was used as the core theme. They were carried out using the action-research approach, whereby after each workshop, the facilitators would reflect and analyse and suggest improvements for the next one.
Design/methodology/approach
The majority of online safety awareness education programmes have been developed in and for advanced countries. In less developed countries, there are fewer programmes as well as a lack of research on the factors that influence the online behaviour of young people online. The Young People Online Education Framework seeks to address this and provide educators, researchers and policymakers an evidence driven construct for developing education programmes informed by issues affecting young people in their respective country/region.
Findings
The framework was applied in Thailand. As there were very few previous studies, original research was conducted via surveys and interviews. It was found that a high proportion of young people had experienced negative interactions online with cyberbullying the main concern. This was confirmed during the workshop phase indicating the need for more research and workshops. There is a plan to continue the research in Thailand, and it is hoped that other researchers will make use of the framework to extend its scope and application.
Originality/value
A novel feature of this framework is the cultural mask. The cultural context of learners is often overlooked in education, especially when education programmes are imported from other countries. This research contends that effective learning strategies and programmes will have a better chance to succeed if the cultural makeup of the target audience is considered and that all topics and activities are parsed through the cultural mask element of the framework.
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Oluwafemi Oriola, Adesesan Barnabas Adeyemo, Maria Papadaki and Eduan Kotzé
Collaborative-based national cybersecurity incident management benefits from the huge size of incident information, large-scale information security devices and aggregation of…
Abstract
Purpose
Collaborative-based national cybersecurity incident management benefits from the huge size of incident information, large-scale information security devices and aggregation of security skills. However, no existing collaborative approach has been able to cater for multiple regulators, divergent incident views and incident reputation trust issues that national cybersecurity incident management presents. This paper aims to propose a collaborative approach to handle these issues cost-effectively.
Design/methodology/approach
A collaborative-based national cybersecurity incident management architecture based on ITU-T X.1056 security incident management framework is proposed. It is composed of the cooperative regulatory unit with cooperative and third-party management strategies and an execution unit, with incident handling and response strategies. Novel collaborative incident prioritization and mitigation planning models that are fit for incident handling in national cybersecurity incident management are proposed.
Findings
Use case depicting how the collaborative-based national cybersecurity incident management would function within a typical information and communication technology ecosystem is illustrated. The proposed collaborative approach is evaluated based on the performances of an experimental cyber-incident management system against two multistage attack scenarios. The results show that the proposed approach is more reliable compared to the existing ones based on descriptive statistics.
Originality/value
The approach produces better incident impact scores and rankings than standard tools. The approach reduces the total response costs by 8.33% and false positive rate by 97.20% for the first attack scenario, while it reduces the total response costs by 26.67% and false positive rate by 78.83% for the second attack scenario.
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The increasing speed and volume of attacks against networked systems highlights the need to automate the intrusion response process. This paper proposes a means by which such…
Abstract
Purpose
The increasing speed and volume of attacks against networked systems highlights the need to automate the intrusion response process. This paper proposes a means by which such automation may be achieved, and presents details of a practical implementation.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper outlines the architecture of a flexible and intelligent automated response system that is able to adapt response decisions according to the context in which a detected incident has occurred. The discussion presents details of a prototype implementation that has been used to evaluate the concept in practice, and demonstrates the feasibility of assessing contextual factors associated with detected incidents.
Findings
A series of worked examples are presented to show how the same incident occurring in different contexts will trigger different decisions from the response system.
Originality/value
The paper contributes towards the domain of intrusion response, and proposes an approach that would enable automation of the response process to be more acceptable to security administrators.
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Christos Sigalas and Vassilis M. Papadakis
The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the relationship patterns between competitive advantage and superior performance.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the relationship patterns between competitive advantage and superior performance.
Design/methodology/approach
This study empirically investigates the aforementioned relationship patterns using a cross-sectional, self-administered survey methodology.
Findings
The results indicate that there are four relationship patterns between competitive advantage and superior performance. In addition, this study provides empirical evidence of the reasons, underpinning the relationship pattern of competitive advantage without superior performance as well as the relationship pattern of superior performance without competitive advantage.
Research limitations/implications
This study contributes to our knowledge that competitive advantage is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for superior performance.
Practical implications
In finding support that there can be cases of underperformance despite competitive advantage and superior performance despite the absence of competitive advantage, the study’s findings are useful to practicing managers involved in the strategic management process of their firms.
Originality/value
This study fills an important gap in the empirical research, by responding to the literature call to test the possible relationship patterns between competitive advantage and superior performance. In addition, this study formally introduces the relationship pattern of competitive advantage without superior performance, and the relationship pattern of superior performance without competitive advantage that until now were largely ignored by the existing literature in the field of strategic management.
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Mohamed A. Shahat, Sulaiman M. Al-Balushi and Mohammed Al-Amri
The purpose of the current study is to assess Omani teachers’ performance on tasks related to the stages of engineering design. To achieve this, data from an engineering design…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the current study is to assess Omani teachers’ performance on tasks related to the stages of engineering design. To achieve this, data from an engineering design test was used, and demographic variables that are correlated with this performance were identified.
Design/methodology/approach
This descriptive study employed a cross-sectional design and the collection of quantitative data. A sample of preservice science teachers from Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) (n = 70) participated in this study.
Findings
Findings showed low and moderate levels of proficiency related to the stages of engineering design. Differences between males and females in terms of performance on engineering design tasks were found, with females scoring higher overall on the assessment. Biology preservice teachers scored higher than teachers from the other two majors (physics and chemistry) in two subscales. There were also differences between teachers studying in the Bachelor of Science (BSc) program and the teacher qualification diploma (TQD) program.
Originality/value
This study provides an overview, in an Arab setting, of preservice science teachers’ proficiency with engineering design process (EDP) tasks. It is hoped that the results may lead to improved instruction in science teacher training programs in similar contexts. Additionally, this research demonstrates how EDP competency relates to preservice teacher gender, major and preparation program. Findings from this study will contribute to the growing body of research investigating the strengths and shortcomings of teacher education programs in relation to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education.
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Nizar Raissi, Anas Hakeem and Hassan Mousa Haidar
This study aims to examine the mediating effects of two corporate social responsibility factors – leadership mindset and corporate commitment – on the relationship between…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine the mediating effects of two corporate social responsibility factors – leadership mindset and corporate commitment – on the relationship between sustainable orientation toward Industry 4.0 and environmental decision-making effectiveness.
Design/methodology/approach
The research model was tested using structural equation modeling based on survey data from 175 companies serving the Hajj and Umrah sector in Saudi Arabia, a sector recognized for its high level of digitalization.
Findings
The results indicate that a sustainable orientation toward Industry 4.0 and digitalization positively influences environmental decision-making effectiveness. Additionally, Corporate commitment was found to have a direct positive effect on environmental decision-making effectiveness, while leadership mindset showed no significant effect.
Originality/value
This study highlights the critical role of sustainable Industry 4.0, driven by digitalization, in enhancing service quality and competitive value in companies serving the Hajj and Umrah sector. These companies see digitalization as an opportunity to improve business outcomes through effective environmental strategic decisions, though its application remains challenging. The study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by providing empirical insights into the impact of digitalization on environmental decision-making effectiveness within this specific context.
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Khadija Alhammadi, Hazem Marashdeh and Matloub Hussain
This study assesses the impact of innovation diffusion theory (IDT), technology readiness index (TRI) and technology acceptance model (TAM) on the actual use of smart learning…
Abstract
Purpose
This study assesses the impact of innovation diffusion theory (IDT), technology readiness index (TRI) and technology acceptance model (TAM) on the actual use of smart learning. This impact also accounts for the country-digital culture by moderating the effects of resistance to change (RTC) and mediating the role of attitude.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors gather data from 301 respondents from various academic institutions in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) by operationalizing established theoretical constructs. The authors adopt a covariance-based structural equation modeling (SEM) approach.
Findings
The results reveal that IDT and TRI significantly and positively affect attitudes toward implementing smart learning. Besides, the attitude fully mediates the relationship between IDT, TRI constructs and behavioral intention (BI). Moreover, this study proves that RTC plays a major role in converging BI to place smart learning into actual use.
Research limitations/implications
The major limitation of the authors' work is that this work employs cross-sectional data from UAE only, and the data were gathered during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
Practical implications
The stakeholders and administrators in government can benefit from the study findings to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the implementation of smart learning, which will contribute to achieving stakeholders and administrators' strategic objectives.
Originality/value
The originality of this work stems from the incorporation of IDT, TRI and TAM constructs in the case of smart learning in UAE in post-COVID-19 scenarios.