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With the growing interest in behavioral health and medical decision-making, this systematic integrative review aims to understand research on cognitive biases in the context of consumer health information seeking and where future research opportunities may reside.

Following a systematic review protocol, 40 empirical research articles, out of 1,127 journal research papers from 12 academic databases, from 1995 to 2019, are included for review.

The study of cognitive biases in consumer health information seeking is a nascent and fast-growing phenomenon, with variety in publication venues and research methods. Among the 16 biases investigated, optimistic bias and confirmation bias have attracted most attention (46.9%). Researchers are most interested in specific disease/illness (35%) and the health factors of consumer products (17.5%). For theoretical presence, about one-third of the reviewed articles have cited behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman, although most of the references are the early works of Kahneman.

As an emerging research area, there exists plenty of cognitive biases to be investigated in the context of health information seeking. In the meantime, the adoption of more recent theoretical insights such as nudge for debiasing may enrich this research area. Health communication scientists may find incorporating the behavioral decision research framework enriches the disciplinary inquiry of health information seeking, while information scientists could use it to commence the cognitive turn of information science evolution.

Through evidence-based understanding, this review shows the potential research directions that health communication scientists and information scientists could contribute to optimize health decisions through the adoption of behavioral decision research framework.

Past studies show that companies’ connection with the government (or politically connected companies (PCCs)) contributed negatively to their financial performance. The grabbing hand theory suggests that political connection demand companies to serve political and social obligation that exhaust companies’ financial resources. The purpose of this paper is to extend the previous studies by examining the role of monitoring mechanisms, specifically corporate governance mechanism and institutional ownership (IO), whether they weaken or strengthen the financial performance of PCCs in Malaysia.

The sample consists of all companies listed on the Main Board of Bursa Malaysia (previously known as Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange) for the year of 2004-2007. The time periods were chosen because there were no significant economic and political events that could possibly distorted the financial and non-financial data.

The findings show that companies’ political connection (the presence of political figure or government representative as members of board of director) has consistently showing negative relationship with performance. The result is consistent with the grabbing hand theory that argues that companies’ connection with government would actually destroy companies’ value. The monitoring role of corporate governance as measured by the percentage of independent board members does not have any significant effect on firm’s performance. The monitoring role of corporate governance as measured by the composition of independent board members have shown a positive significant effect on the company’s performance. However the second monitoring mechanism, the percentage of institutional investors, have a tendency to weaken the company’s performance.

The findings of this study provide an additional understanding of the consequence of government intervention on companies’ performance. This study also highlights the role of monitoring mechanism (independence board members and IO) in strengthening or weakening the performance. The findings suggest that the proper appointment criteria for board members should be seriously considered to ensure better corporate governance structure. Therefore, the formation of the nomination committee as suggested by the current Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance play an important contribution to ensure candidates nominated as board members have proper credentials and qualifications to carry out responsibilities as board members.

Business performance measurement is vital to expanding knowledge of how various strategies and behaviors affect organization outcomes. Given the recent growth of the family business research field, it is appropriate to assess how researchers measure family business performance, seeking to provide thoughts related to how to improve family business performance measurement in research. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study applies a systematic approach to review 338 family business performance studies published in peer-reviewed journals from 1980 through 2015.

Observations are presented from this exhaustive review, including the expansion of the family business research field, types of journals publishing family business studies, research topics, types of measures utilized, and others. In addition, potential gaps are identified and possible solutions are presented.

It appears no review of family business performance measurement in research is available. Observations from this review may assist researchers in measuring a vital metric, family business performance.