Benedict Ogbemudia Imhanrenialena, Wilson Ebhotemhen, Ibe Benjamin Chukwu, Ozioma Happiness Obi-Anike and Anthony Aziegbemin Ekeoba
This paper aims to explore how women’s compassionate leadership behaviors relate to physical isolation, trust building and turnover intention in virtual work environments in…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore how women’s compassionate leadership behaviors relate to physical isolation, trust building and turnover intention in virtual work environments in Nigeria.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors collected quantitative data through two-wave surveys from 428 respondents in virtual work environments across public and private organizations in Nigeria. The proposed hypotheses were tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling.
Findings
The outcomes from the test of hypotheses suggest that women’s compassionate managerial leadership behaviors negatively relate to physical isolation among virtual workers. Conversely, a positive link was found between women’s compassionate managerial leadership behaviors and trust building. Further, an inverse association was found between women’s compassionate managerial leadership behaviors and turnover intention among virtual workers.
Practical implications
Based on the findings, organizations may consider deploying more women managers to virtual work schedules to address trust, isolation and turnover intention challenges. Also, HR practitioners may consider training male managers in virtual work on how to restructure their relationships with subordinates to reflect compassionate attributes so that subordinates can feel safe sharing their worries with them for timely support. Policy-wise, relevant government agencies that are saddled with the responsibility of emancipating women from career-inhibiting patriarchal practices in Africa (i.e. confining women to the house) should encourage women to embrace the homeworking model, which holds great career potential for women.
Originality/value
As a response to the current calls for research on the suitable leadership style for virtual work environments, this study empirically demonstrates that women’s innate compassionate leadership behaviors significantly address physical isolation, trust and turnover intention challenges in virtual work settings. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that explores the link between these variables. As such, this study substantially enriches the literature on gender in management.
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Benedict Ogbemudia Imhanrenialena, Wilson Ebhotemhen, Emmanuel Kalu Agbaeze, Nwafor Cletus Eze and Ejike Sebastian Oforkansi
Following the renewed interest to harness the full potential of African female employees in the workplace, this paper aims to explore how patriarchal behaviors relate to career…
Abstract
Purpose
Following the renewed interest to harness the full potential of African female employees in the workplace, this paper aims to explore how patriarchal behaviors relate to career adaptability, subjective career success and job satisfaction among women in Nigerian organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
A structured questionnaire was used in collecting quantitative data from 508 middle-level managers in Nigerian organizations. The hypotheses were tested with structural equation modeling.
Findings
Patriarchal-induced gendered work practices were found to have a significant negative influence on career adaptability among Nigerian career women. Contrary to expectations, patriarchal discrimination was found to have an insignificant negative influence on job satisfaction and subjective career success, suggesting that Nigerian career women still experience significant subjective career success and job satisfaction amid patriarchal practices in the workplace.
Practical implications
For female employees to possess significant career adaptability resources that will enable them to reconstruct their careers to match redesigned job functions in times of innovation in the workplace, organizations should reinvent their human resources (HR) policies that address patriarchal-induced gendered work practices in the workplace.
Originality/value
This current study extends research on how patriarchy affects female employees in African organizations from the traditional research focus of patriarchy and work-life balance relationships to the under-explored area of career experience among women. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first quantitative research that explores how patriarchy influences career adaptability resources, subjective career success and job satisfaction among Nigerian female employees.
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Benedict Ogbemudia Imhanrenialena, Ogohi Daniel Cross, Wilson Ebhotemhen, Benjamin Ibe Chukwu and Ejike Sebastian Oforkansi
The purpose of this research is to investigate how bridging and bonding social capital relate to career success among career women in a patriarchal African society. Further, the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to investigate how bridging and bonding social capital relate to career success among career women in a patriarchal African society. Further, the intervening role of self-esteem in the association between social capital and career success was examined.
Design/methodology/approach
Structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 488 Nigerian career women in management cadres in both private and public sectors. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was applied in testing the proposed hypotheses.
Findings
The outcomes show that bridging social capital has a significant positive relationship with subjective and objective career success. Conversely, bonding social capital has no significant positive relationship with subjective and objective career success. Further analyses show that self-esteem only partially mediates the association between bridging social capital and career success while an insignificant intervening effect of self-esteem on the association between bonding social capital and career success was found.
Practical implications
The findings suggest the need for organisations to stimulate a friendly work environment that has a zero-tolerance culture for workplace discrimination against women. This will enable the women to relate with people in the workplace irrespective of gender or cadre to generate more bridging social capital to achieve greater career success.
Originality/value
The study extends social capital and career success research to career women in a patriarchal African context as a response to the call for context-specific career research in non-western countries particularly Africa. Second, the study provides empirical evidence that African career woman with bridging social capital can achieve career success irrespective of their self-esteem level amid patriarchal discrimination.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature and process of leadership in a mid‐sized, family‐controlled bank in Singapore in order to understand how it grew and developed…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature and process of leadership in a mid‐sized, family‐controlled bank in Singapore in order to understand how it grew and developed under family control.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on distributed leadership as a theoretical framework in exploring how a major corporate acquisition was conceived and undertaken to advance the bank's growth and development. Data were obtained through structured interviews with managers based on a three‐part discussion protocol following a pre‐interview questionnaire.
Findings
An “extended” system of leadership involving different levels of managers is developed that successfully completed the acquisition and produced significant growth from the combined businesses.
Research limitations/implications
Based on a single case, the paper does not claim that the observed phenomena are typical of mid‐sized family‐controlled businesses (FCBs). However, for scholars, the paper suggests how studying leadership practice in such FCBs may produce insights that challenge the popular view of an all‐powerful family leader by substituting a more nuanced perspective of a collaborative leadership system that facilitates entrepreneurial activity down the firm.
Practical implications
For managers, the study suggests how deeply developed collaboration among different levels of managers may produce competitive advantage for FCBs that seek further growth and development.
Social implications
It is suggested how further research of the growth processes of mid‐sized FCBs may maximize the value of entrepreneurial opportunities for their “extended” family of stakeholders, specifically for their customers with whom FCBs typically enjoy close relations.
Originality/value
The paper fills an empirical gap in the literature on competitive, mid‐sized FCBs by articulating a process in which a unique competency is developed for their ongoing survival as a family‐controlled enterprise.
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The purpose of this paper is to introduce the papers in the current issue and invite comments from the readers of the journal.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to introduce the papers in the current issue and invite comments from the readers of the journal.
Design/methodology/approach
This editorial review is intended to stimulate a discussion about the effect of iterative models of professional development, the meaning of student-centred learning, valid evidence of teachers’ learning through collaborative professional development, teachers’ responses to top-down innovation and the cultural script of teaching, all of which are focal in the texts published in Issue 6.3 of the journal.
Findings
The boundaries between lesson and learning studies, top-down and bottom-up innovations, teacher learning and teacher participation and cultural scripts are far from distinct and for good reasons.
Originality/value
This editorial review provides an overview of the insights and issues identified by the authors in this issue of the journal.
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In contrast to common literature that suggests that trade credit is an extremely expensive source of financing with annual interest rates exceeding 40 percent, this paper seeks to…
Abstract
Purpose
In contrast to common literature that suggests that trade credit is an extremely expensive source of financing with annual interest rates exceeding 40 percent, this paper seeks to argue that the average interest rate of trade credit does not exceed the cost of alternative funds, thereby explaining why trade credit constitutes a substantial part of the optimal financing mix of large, liquid, and capital market listed firms.
Design/methodology/approach
Besides providing a formula for estimating a firm's actual trade credit interest rate, this paper is mainly based on a descriptive analysis of trade credit use as well as on survey results of a broad range of prior studies.
Findings
The paper finds that highly liquid firms use substantial amounts of trade credit, thus indicating that trade credit use per se cannot be as expensive as literature supposes. In line, estimated average interest rates are about 4 to 6 percent.
Originality/value
By arguing that actual cost of trade credit use is far from being as high as literature supposes, this paper provides important implications for optimal short‐term financing strategies as well as for the assessment of trade credit use in credit worthiness analyses.
Where there has been little in‐depth understanding of sovereign wealth funds, the purpose of this paper is to describe the complex nature of one of the world's largest sovereign…
Abstract
Purpose
Where there has been little in‐depth understanding of sovereign wealth funds, the purpose of this paper is to describe the complex nature of one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds, Temasek Holdings (“Temasek”), whose “active” investment strategy has been emulated by a number of other funds.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws mainly on public data in developing a case history of Temasek.
Findings
Based on this data, the paper suggests how the firm's underlying strategy seems to be about pursuing the national interests of its sovereign shareholder in both a commercial and non‐commercial manner.
Research limitations/implications
Consistent with a case‐based approach, the paper presents a single example of a sovereign wealth fund.
Practical implications
The aggressive manner in which Temasek has built up its international portfolio coupled with the mixed impact of its “active” investment strategy raise a number of issues about the nature of an important sovereign wealth fund.
Originality/value
The value of the paper is in its cogent, insightful picture of the development of a sovereign wealth fund that was a pioneer of this phenomenon.
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Cinzia Dessi, Wilson Ng, Michela Floris and Stefano Cabras
The purpose of this paper is to explore the “perceptive concordance” – the proximity of perceptions of the business- between key managers and customers of two small family-owned…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the “perceptive concordance” – the proximity of perceptions of the business- between key managers and customers of two small family-owned and managed businesses (“FBs”) and two larger non-FBs in Cagliari, Italy as a preliminary basis for understanding how small retail businesses that are typically family owned have continued to compete and thrive in many Western European cities.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors asked how small FBs have been able to compete in an advanced European economy despite apparent competitive disadvantages relative to large superstores selling the same products. In addressing this question the authors drew on a qualitative research methodology in which the authors interviewed senior managers and surveyed customers of the four businesses and applied an original statistical model to assess the degree of their perceptive concordance with over 100 customers of each business.
Findings
The study's findings suggest a significant difference between key managers and customers of the sampled FBs and non-FBs in the perceptive concordance of the respective businesses held by those managers and customers.
Research limitations/implications
Based on the research in this study the authors have developed a number of scholarly and managerial implications in the way that both FBs and non-FBs may retain old customers and gain new ones by anticipating and not merely responding to their product and service preferences.
Originality/value
This paper extends the literature on customer relations management (“CRM”) in FBs by explaining how small High Street FBs in competitive retail businesses have continued to thrive in Western Europe where owner-managers have developed and successfully leveraged their tacit knowledge of the requirements of repeat customers.
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New Ways of Working seems to change the leadership agenda. Activity-based working and home-based work lead to different behaviors of employees. Supervising styles will change from…
Abstract
New Ways of Working seems to change the leadership agenda. Activity-based working and home-based work lead to different behaviors of employees. Supervising styles will change from command-and-control toward goal-setting-and-trust. This chapter describes the trend and provides new data on the actual use and effectiveness of these new supervision styles. It appears to be a mix of different leadership styles, such as leading by vision, setting targets and control on output, providing trust.