The purpose of this study is to examine the predictive effects of social context and its interaction effects with individual differences on job crafting behaviors. Specially, this…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine the predictive effects of social context and its interaction effects with individual differences on job crafting behaviors. Specially, this paper draws on the purposeful work behavior theory to outline how the four social characteristics (social support, interdependence, interaction outside the organization and feedback from others) and the moderation effects of neuroticism predict task crafting, relational crafting and cognitive crafting.
Design/methodology/approach
The current study examined four social characteristics as antecedents of job crafting behaviors. The moderating effects of neuroticism were explored as well. By conducting a three-wave survey, the authors received a sample of 253 full-time incumbents in Japan. The data analysis used multiple regressions by using R language. Correlational and moderated regression analyses were performed to test this study’s hypotheses.
Findings
Empirical analysis of this study’s data shows some initial support for the application of the purposeful work behaviors theory to job crafting. The findings indicate that all four social characteristics promoted particular job crafting behaviors. Neuroticism was a significant moderator for the relationships between social support, interaction outside the organization, feedback from others and relative job crafting dimensions. The current study extends existing models of job crafting.
Originality/value
The current study makes significant theoretical contributions for both work design and job crafting literature. The present framework enriches our understanding of job crafting by demonstrating a picture of a moderated model between social characteristics and job crafting by uncovering the moderator – neuroticism. This study’s findings also contribute to managerial practices. Managers should build a supportive context and provide interdependence, interactions outside the organization and interpersonal performance feedback. To motivate employees with different personalities, offering different social context is necessary.
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Haiyan Qian, Allan Walker and Xiaojun Li
The purpose of this paper is to develop a preliminary model of instructional leadership in the Chinese educational context and explore the ways in which Chinese school principals…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop a preliminary model of instructional leadership in the Chinese educational context and explore the ways in which Chinese school principals locate their instructional-leadership practices in response to traditional expectations and the requirements of recent reforms.
Design/methodology/approach
In-depth interviews were conducted with 22 selected primary school principals in Shenzhen and Guangzhou. A qualitative analysis was conducted to categorize the major leadership practices enacted by these principals.
Findings
An initial model of instructional leadership in China with six major dimensions is constructed. The paper also illustrates and elaborates on three dimensions with the greatest context-specific meanings for Chinese principals.
Originality/value
The paper explores the ways in which Chinese principals enact their instructional leadership in a context in which “the west wind meets the east wind”; that is, when they are required to accommodate both imported reform initiatives and traditional expectations. The paper contributes to the sparse existing research on principals’ instructional leadership in non-western cultural and social contexts.
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Debin Fang, Haixia Yang, Baojun Gao and Xiaojun Li
Discovering the research topics and trends from a large quantity of library electronic references is essential for scientific research. Current research of this kind mainly…
Abstract
Purpose
Discovering the research topics and trends from a large quantity of library electronic references is essential for scientific research. Current research of this kind mainly depends on human justification. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how to identify research topics and evolution in trends from library electronic references efficiently and effectively by employing automatic text analysis algorithms.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors used the latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), a probabilistic generative topic model to extract the latent topic from the large quantity of research abstracts. Then, the authors conducted a regression analysis on the document-topic distributions generated by LDA to identify hot and cold topics.
Findings
First, this paper discovers 32 significant research topics from the abstracts of 3,737 articles published in the six top accounting journals during the period of 1992-2014. Second, based on the document-topic distributions generated by LDA, the authors identified seven hot topics and six cold topics from the 32 topics.
Originality/value
The topics discovered by LDA are highly consistent with the topics identified by human experts, indicating the validity and effectiveness of the methodology. Therefore, this paper provides novel knowledge to the accounting literature and demonstrates a methodology and process for topic discovery with lower cost and higher efficiency than the current methods.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore how consumers’ trust is enhanced by e-commerce-based agribusiness companies. It also aims to shed light on the role of social commerce in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how consumers’ trust is enhanced by e-commerce-based agribusiness companies. It also aims to shed light on the role of social commerce in improving consumers’ trust.
Design/methodology/approach
To achieve the research purpose, an in-depth multiple case study is performed. In this study, three cases in short food supply chain (SFSC) in China are selected, and they are all e-commerce agribusiness companies. They adopted common ways to build up, maintain and reinforce consumers’ trust.
Findings
It is revealed that the companies innovatively adopted social commerce, both online and offline, to overcome the trust problems usually faced by e-commerce companies. It is also shown that offline contact with potential consumers is an important first step for agribusiness e-commerce entrepreneurs to build up trust with consumers.
Research limitations/implications
By adopting a multiple case study method, the research has limited generalizability to other types of SFSCs. Since the findings are from Chinese agribusiness e-commerce companies, the generalization to other sectors must be done with caution.
Practical implications
Some managerial implications are given as follows: first, offline contact with consumers could be realized through different channels. Taking advantage of existing social network or trying to find consumers in urban communities might be effective ways. Second, trust building with consumers is not an easy task, managers need to emphasize trust building, trust maintaining, as well as trust reinforcing with consumers. In agri-food sector, managers might need to specifically address the importance of food safety and quality so as to not lose consumer trust in one night.
Originality/value
The study has mainly two contributions: first, it has managerial implications for agribusiness e-commerce entrepreneurs, addressing the important role of social presence in building up consumer trust. Second, it contributes to social presence and social relations literature by providing new empirical evidence from e-commerce in agri-food sector and in developing countries.
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Qingxue Li, Xiaojun Fang, Cuiping Zhang and Wei Xiao
To achieve new emission standards and enhance the denitrification of the oxidation ditch in the Handan West Sewage Treatment Plant, this research used the ASM Bio-P model based on…
Abstract
To achieve new emission standards and enhance the denitrification of the oxidation ditch in the Handan West Sewage Treatment Plant, this research used the ASM Bio-P model based on self-made simulation software to study the optimum operation of the denitrification efficiency. The results indicate that:1) the volume of the aerobic zone was increased and the volume ratio between aerobic and anoxic zones was controlled to approximately 3:1; 2) the concentration of the dissolved oxygen (DO) in the aerobic zone was increased and was controlled at 1 mg/L in summer and 3 mg/L in winter; 3) the proper sludge retention time (SRT) was controlled and was maintained at 15 d in summer and 20 d in winter; and 4) the appropriate reflux ratio was controlled to 100% and 50% for summer and winter, respectively. The COD, TN, NH3-N and TP in the effluent reached the first (B) standard of the Discharge Standard of Pollutants for Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant (GB18918-2002).
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This study aims to investigate the influence of various categories of institutions on international joint ventures' (IJV) strategic mutation behavior from an institutional…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the influence of various categories of institutions on international joint ventures' (IJV) strategic mutation behavior from an institutional perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors test their hypotheses using a sample of 494 Chinese small and medium IJVs over a three‐year period (2006‐2008). They conducted empirical result with Cox hazard models.
Findings
Changes in law environment will increase the likelihood of IJVs' strategic mutation. Changes in governmental policy will increase the likelihood of IJVs' strategic mutation. The positive correlativity between the variance of law environment and the propensity of IJVs' strategic mutation will be positively moderated by the distance of normative institutional pillar. The positive correlativity between the variance of governmental policy and the propensity of IJVs' strategic mutation will be negatively moderated by IJV performance.
Originality/value
Variation of regulatory institutional pillar increases the likelihood of IJVs' strategic mutation. Meanwhile, the effects of law environment and governmental policy, which are two types of regulatory institutional pillar, are moderated by normative institutional pillar and firms' performance, respectively.
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Xiaojun Xu, Wu He, Ping Yin, Xiaobo Xu, Yuting Wang and Haitao Zhang
The purpose of this paper is to present a new tool, business network information ecological chain (BNIEC) aiming to solve the current information problems in business network…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present a new tool, business network information ecological chain (BNIEC) aiming to solve the current information problems in business network, make more profits to business websites and to maintain the sustainable development of the business network environment in Internet of Things (IoT) era.
Design/methodology/approach
From multi-disciplinary perspectives, learning from the knowledge in information ecology, economics, the IoT and system theory, this paper first analyzes the positioning of BNIEC in different subjects. Second, it proposes the definition, components and characteristics of BNIEC and designs the BNIEC concept map helping to understand the BNIEC system. Last, this paper builds the structural model and the information flow models of BNIEC.
Findings
The study first presents the concept of BNIEC and based on the trans-disciplinary point of view, builds the structure model of BNIEC from three aspects: nodes, relations among nodes and link modes and illustrates the model using the knowledge from the system theory. Also, it builds two kinds of the information flow models by the related information knowledge in IoT.
Originality/value
This paper aims to introduce not only a new tool but an ecological idea to business network companies, to create a pleasant network environment, more than that, to make more benefits for themselves. Meanwhile, it has important significance in the sustainable development of the business network environment, business websites, business network information resources and information technology. Especially in today’s IoT era, it shows an ecological thinking to solve the information problems in business network that we may face in the future.
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Chunyu Li, Yongfu He, Ling Peng and Denghua Yuan
Recently, the popularity of store brands has resulted in some manufacturer brands being removed from shelves. The current literature lacks empirical work on the effect of…
Abstract
Purpose
Recently, the popularity of store brands has resulted in some manufacturer brands being removed from shelves. The current literature lacks empirical work on the effect of manufacturer brand erosion on consumer assortment perception and repatronage intention. Based on signalling theory, the purpose of this paper is to manufacturer brands play a signalling role and contend that manufacturer brand erosion has detrimental effects on the assortment perception due to reduced signalling efficacy.
Design/methodology/approach
A 3 (low manufacturer brand erosion vs high manufacturer brand erosion vs manufacturer brand dominance) ×2 (assortment size: small vs large) between-subject experiment was conducted.
Findings
Manufacturer brand erosion exerts a negative effect on assortment attractiveness and consumers’ repatronage intention; the greater the erosion, the larger the negative effect. These negative effects are mediated by reduced consumer perceptions of assortment quality and variety. A large (vs small) assortment size attenuates the negative effect of manufacturer brand erosion by improving perceived assortment quality.
Practical implications
To engage in strategic positioning through efficient assortment management, retailers should cooperate with brand manufacturers, instead of promoting their own private labels. Nevertheless, a large assortment dominated by store brands signals that the retailer has built a strong private brand, which in turn gains a differentiation advantage.
Originality/value
This paper is among the first to take the signalling perspective and explicitly investigate whether and how manufacturer brand erosion exerts a significant impact on assortment perception.
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Rajat Kukreti and Mayank Yadav
This study aims to understand how brand personality affects purchase intention through brand love and perceived quality in e-commerce.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to understand how brand personality affects purchase intention through brand love and perceived quality in e-commerce.
Design/methodology/approach
Three hundred forty-eight users of e-commerce sites in New Delhi, India, were surveyed for the study. The data set was examined using confirmatory factor analysis, and the research hypotheses were assessed using structural equation modeling.
Findings
Two important conclusions emerged from the study. First, brand love and perceived quality have been considerably and favorably influenced by all six dimensions of brand personality of e-commerce brands. Second, the purchase intention toward the e-commerce sites is significantly and positively impacted by brand love and perceived quality.
Practical implications
This study by exploring various dimensions of brand personality, will assist e-commerce executives in increasing purchase intention toward the e-retailing sites.
Originality/value
This research is supposed to be the foremost to look at how brand personality, through brand love and perceived quality affects purchase intention toward e-commerce websites. The attachment theory is used in this study as a theoretical foundation for linking e-commerce brand personality to customers’ purchase intentions via brand love and perceived quality.
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Tung-Sheng Wang, Austin Rong-Da Liang, Chia-Chun Ko and Jie-Heng Lin
The objective of this study is to investigate the impact of geographical labeling (GL) and place of origin on consumers' perceived tea quality and purchase intention, as well as…
Abstract
Purpose
The objective of this study is to investigate the impact of geographical labeling (GL) and place of origin on consumers' perceived tea quality and purchase intention, as well as to analyze the moderating effects of traditional tea processing methods and the price of tea.
Design/methodology/approach
This study conducts two experiments by combining a simulated scenario with a questionnaire; overall, 383 and 678 valid samples were collected, respectively.
Findings
(1) The existence of GL is extremely important and will give consumers the perception of higher tea quality resulting in higher purchase intention. The tea’s production method and geographic location are strongly correlated. Thus, whether the tea is produced with traditional methods has a moderating effect on the place of origin, GL, and consumer response in study 1. (3) Different tea pricing has a moderating effect on the place of origin/GL and consumer response in study 2.
Originality/value
This study demonstrates the relationship between consumers' perception of tea GL, and their response helps to identify the difference between Eastern and Western tea culture, which can be used to help promote and market tea leaves. Multiple clues show a complementary effect between the place of origin and the GL on tea packaging. In addition, perception of the tea craftsmanship from the place of origin (long-term) and the price manipulation (short-term) have a moderating effect, which can be used to improve tea marketing design in academia and in practice.