This research responds to calls for studies aimed at developing a more nuanced understanding of women small business owners’ networking behaviours and structures. The study examined whether business start-up motivations and phase of the business (prestart-up, start-up and established) influenced women’s networking behaviours and structures. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 28 women. Interview data were used to categorise participants into classic, forced, and work–family owners. Analysis of the interviews found no marked differences in networking behaviours and network structures of participants during prestart-up phase. During start-up and established phases differences began to emerge. Given that classic and forced owners had established their businesses for financial reasons, a diverse network was more relevant for them. However, work–family participants established the business for family/work balance, thus a small network of close ties was sufficient to achieve their business goals. Theoretical, practical and research implications of the findings are outlined.

The relationship between managerial change and strategic change is a complex issue that challenges our understanding of how firms react to their business environment. In this study, we analyse the influence of the management team and more specifically their knowledge and capabilities in the process of strategic change. To do so, we delve deeper into the relationship between managerial change and strategic change by identifying the sequence of these changes. Using qualitative methodology, we analyse 10 companies listed on the Spanish Stock Exchange over an extensive period to formulate our propositions. Our analysis shows that managerial change precedes strategic change. Top management team reorganization, even without Chief Executive Officer succession, was a sufficient condition for strategic change to take place. Moreover, we identified key modifications that took place whenever strategic change occurred. Our results provide meaningful insights into the processes of strategic change within firms that broaden our theoretical knowledge in this area.

Art centres fulfil many functions in remote regions as a source of Indigenous identity and creativity; as a link to the global art market; as centres for community engagement and participation; and as a source of social capital providing a range of services for local communities. They are dependent on funding from State and Federal authorities and they are identified as one of the success stories in remote community development. However, they face an uncertain future in the light of their multiple functions and their position as both a source of traditional identity and a link to an external art market. The article highlights the challenges faced by government in the evaluation of their effectiveness and contribution; and in particular discusses the suitability of the hybrid economy model as a representation of their functions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between performance appraisal satisfaction, job stress and work–family conflict. Furthermore, the study explores the role of job stress as a mediator between satisfaction with performance appraisal and work–family conflict. The total sample consisted of 120 participants from different industries. The findings revealed that performance appraisal satisfaction was negatively correlated with job stress and work–family conflict. However, job stress fully mediated the relationship between performance appraisal satisfaction and work–family conflict. The study contributes to the limited body of knowledge on employee reactions to performance appraisal and in particular, performance appraisal satisfaction. The findings can help to shed more light on the relationship between performance appraisal satisfaction and employees’ psychological responses.

This study estimated and specified a model of corporate reputation, its social performance, and firm-level variables in the context of an emerging country. Corporate reputation is the overall estimation of a firm by its stakeholders expressed by the demonstrative behaviors to its customers, employees, investors, business partners, and general public. The social performance of the firm has been conceptualized in terms of its demonstrative responsible behavior toward community, environment, and employees. Organizational variability has been captured in this study through the representation of firms from various industries as the relationship between corporate reputation and firm’s social performance was contingent on the type of industry and expectation of industry-specific stakeholders relevant to the firm. Data were collected from 220 organizations representing 11 different industry verticals. The findings supported that corporate reputation is determined by the conjoint influence of a host of firm specific as well as its social performance factors. In addition, the reputational effect of firm’s social performance was found to vary both across and within sectors, according to the various types of social performance activities the firm was engaged in. This study demonstrated the comprehensive measures of the firm’s reputation, social performance, and the associative relationship between them conditioned by firm-specific attributes and nature of the industry. The study has far reaching implications in terms of managing the firm’s boundary spanning activities and relationships in the perspective of emerging markets.

This paper reports on a project conducted with representatives of indigenous Māori organizations that are active in New Zealand land-based sectors. The primary aim of the research was to assist these organizations in thinking about their current and future positioning with regard to climate change. Using Peter Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology as a broad framework for the research, the paper first seeks to capture some of the likely issues that enable and constrain strategic activity in the climate change arena. It then uses various soft systems modelling tools to research and structure a debate to consider the desirability and feasibility of particular interventions.

Firms managed by women present some differences in organizational conditions in terms of type of business and manager profile. The aim of this study is to check if those differences persist in family firms where the presence of female managers is higher, especially in second or subsequent generation family firms, than in non-family firms. The results reveal that family firms run by women are not smaller, but are concentrated in the services sector like non-family firms. Regarding the manager profile there are no differences either in the level of training or the age of female managers. They possess, however, less management experience but only in first generation family firms. In sum, gender differences in the type of business and in the manager profile found in the management literature disappear in family firms, only a sectoral gender effect persists.

This paper examines the effect of corporate governance mechanisms on companies’ decision to assure their sustainability reports and their choice of assurance provider in countries with a greater stakeholder orientation. The corporate governance factors analyzed are related to the strength of the board’s monitoring function, which is determined by the size, independence and activity of the sustainability committee. The international sample consists of 610 companies operating in countries that are more stakeholder oriented from the period 2007–2014. We propose alternative logit models of analysis using the random effects estimator. Consistently with our propositions, our results provide evidence that a firm’s sustainability assurance and its choice of the accounting profession are positively associated with board independence and the activity of the sustainability committee. In addition, the empirical evidence obtained shows a U-shaped relationship between the board size and assurance issues.

Existing change management models have been developed from research undertaken largely within the for-profit sector, with little reference to the unique challenges of the nonprofit sector. This article identifies a number of characteristics of change management that may be unique to the nonprofit sector. The research sought to understand change from the perspective of those within the sector who experienced it using Grounded Theory in a rich single case study as the methodology, applying an inductive reasoning approach to the development of theory. Results point to the impact of four key characteristics that require a more substantial focus in planned change models when applied to nonprofits. These include formal reflection for change agents and change recipients, development of trust, and confidence in the organisation before the actual change, focussing on the individual experience of change, and the sequencing of events from a planning perspective.

This study explores the relationships of negative affectivity with two frequently studied outcome variables job performance and turnover intentions. Conventional wisdom holds that negative affectivity has a harmful impact on both job performance and intentions to leave; however, we propose a more nuanced perspective using empirical and theoretical arguments (e.g., self-regulation theory) to highlight the functional effects of negative affectivity. To test our hypotheses, we collected self-reported and supervisor-reported data from seven organizations in Pakistan. The findings based on data collected from 280 employees show that while negative affectivity is detrimental for job performance, this effect is mitigated as negative affectivity increases. It further shows that the linear negative main effect of negative affectivity on job performance is more pronounced when employees experience less time-related work stress. Finally, the curvilinear relationship between negative affectivity and turnover intentions is moderated by time-related work stress. The relationship has a U shape at high levels of time-related work stress, whereas at low levels it has an inverted U shape. A discussion of the limitations, future research, and implications for theory building and practice conclude the article.

This research studies industry exit in the Japanese context, by examining the process followed five Japanese flat panel display manufacturers as they de-committed to and later exited from the industry. The five cases examine firms with systematically different exit barriers due to the presence or absence of strategic centrality and vertical integration in each firm. With one exception, all the firms followed multi-staged exit processes involving cooperative arrangements with other industry participants. Firms with middle to high levels of commitment and exit barriers went through more steps in the process than those with the lowest levels of commitment. The effect of top management succession and long-term employment upon the exit process are considered, and the role of cooperative arrangements in reducing exit barriers are discussed.

With the widespread shift from models of welfare to business-led development, capacity development offers a useful lens from which to consider the emergence of Indigenous social enterprise as a business-led development approach. We explore capacity development from the international development literature and identify capacity development principles in the context of an Indigenous social enterprise in remote northeast Arnhem Land. Here, Aboriginal Australians continue to experience poverty and marginalisation. This paper provides an ethnographic example of the relationship between Indigenous social enterprise and capacity development. Identifying principles of capacity development in this rich context reveals the remit of the Indigenous social enterprise privileges environmental stewardship and cultural maintenance.

Collective entrepreneurship (CE) is the ability of several individuals to jointly innovate and create within organisations. In this exploratory study, we investigate whether the relationship between some specific leadership styles and more effective CE is affected by moderator variables. The unit of analysis were staff members of a Portuguese group of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). A total of 204 questionnaires were returned, representing almost half the employee population we approached. For measurement, we employed 19 items to gather the six latent variables related to our model. For data analysis, we used partial least squares. We found that participative leadership style had the highest joint and indirect effect on more effective CE. Job satisfaction appears to be an important moderator for the occurrence of CE. The impact of employees’ organisational commitment and collaboration on CE is rather weak. Our study contributes to advancing knowledge in the fields of organisational psychology and entrepreneurship. We combine and extend previous research, which allows us to reconcile the sometimes contradictory findings so far concerning leadership and CE in the realm of small- and medium-sized enterprises.

This article reports on a case study of a decade-long organizing forms response to the need for groundbreaking innovation while maintaining existing operational performance – the explore–exploit conundrum. Employing ‘grounded research,’ data were collected on the experiences of the Asia-Pacific arm of a multinational professional service firm’s key decision-makers, innovators and entrepreneurs. The findings reveal a three-tiered organizing forms response to the explore–exploit paradox, characterized by a novel combination of heavy exploitation-driven actions alongside deep exploration projects. This case suggests that one successful approach to delivering on both explore and exploit focuses on a productive tension that emerges by enacting innovative organizing forms with contextual awareness. This productive tension was sufficiently powerful to impel individuals to innovate, but also sufficiently contained to avoid interfering with commercial outcomes. An explore–exploit framework conceptualizes organizational changes incorporating complexity and contradiction, without the implicit emphasis on removing or denying the existing tension.

This paper examines the influence of risks on alliance governance modes in high-tech industries. The extant literature has devoted little attention to the preferred governance mode based on the risks surrounding alliances. In this paper, we examine why risks are key factors in the alliance governance decision and investigate the choice of alliance governance mode in high-tech industries. Hypotheses are formulated based on risk perspectives; these hypotheses are empirically tested using data on 3,228 alliance records generated over the past 5 years in high-tech industries. The results suggest that risk perspectives provide an effective rationale for choosing an alliance governance mode in a high-tech industry. In the conclusion, we discuss critical issues in the current debates on predicting alliance governance modes.

A basic underlying assumption of the psychological contract is that both parties come to a mutual agreement about the expectations and obligations of a contract of employment. Recent research provides evidence of the potential for employees to develop unrealistic expectations from this contract and this has been described as a sense of entitlement. In this article, we outline two studies. In the first study, we test the internal structure and reliability of a scale we developed and named the Measure of Employee Entitlement. In the second study, we test the predictive validity of the Measure of Employee Entitlement against a measure of reciprocity. The development and validation of the Measure of Employee Entitlement extends our knowledge of sense of entitlement in the workplace and situates entitlement as a factor that may impact on the development of psychological contracts. This research provides a platform from which researchers and practitioners can continue to coherently and consistently investigate the phenomenon of employee entitlement.

Based on the job demands–resources model, this study considers how employees’ perceptions of organizational politics might reduce their engagement in organizational citizenship behavior. It also considers the moderating role of two contextual resources and one personal resource (i.e., supervisor transformational leadership, knowledge sharing with peers, and resilience) and argues that they buffer the negative relationship between perceptions of organizational politics and organizational citizenship behavior. Data from a Mexican-based manufacturing organization reveal that perceptions of organizational politics reduce organizational citizenship behavior, but the effect is weaker with higher levels of transformational leadership, knowledge sharing, and resilience. The buffering role of resilience is particularly strong when transformational leadership is low, thus suggesting a three-way interaction among perceptions of organizational politics, resilience, and transformational leadership. These findings indicate that organizations marked by strongly politicized internal environments can counter the resulting stress by developing adequate contextual and personal resources within their ranks.

Despite the implication of organizational resources and the resource-based view of the firm, the market orientation literature has not examined associated constructs. Additionally, while it is recognized that emerging economies (e.g., India) are key drivers of economic growth, this literature has not paid sufficient attention to such markets, with few exceptions. We examine the impact of proactive market orientation on innovation capability, and performance in a sample of predominantly service firms, in a culture characterized by high power distance and low uncertainty avoidance. We contribute by conceptualizing and demonstrating the moderating impact of intrafirm causal ambiguity, drawn from resource-based theories of the firm. Based on Structural Equation Modelling analysis of responses to a survey of marketing managers, we find that intra-firm causal ambiguity moderates the proactive market orientation-innovation capability relationship, while this strategic orientation is linked to business performance through innovation. We discuss these findings, limitations, implications, and directions for future research.

This qualitative study aims to explain how social support enables independent professionals to achieve work–life balance. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 50 independent professionals in the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden. The interview data were analyzed from a capability approach, from which work–life balance is understood in terms of capabilities. The most important sources of social support for independent professionals appeared to be their partner, family, as well as work and nonwork-related friends who were able to provide emotional and instrumental support. However, the extent to which social support can be converted into capabilities is influenced by individual (gender and cohabitation), institutional (the ease of doing business and formal childcare), and societal factors (financial hardship and familialism). The cross-national comparison shows that the institutional and societal context may hinder or reinforce social support for work–life balance, resulting in different experiences across countries.

Firms are continually trying to identify innovation sources in order to improve organizational performance, but the identification of such origins is a complex and poorly understood issue, particularly as far as nonprofit firms are concerned. The social and cooperative agrifood arrangement has become one of the main and newest types of nonprofit organization in China since the implementation of the law related to specialized cooperatives, on July 1, 2007. In this research, a conceptual model is proposed to show that the characteristics of innovative sources can determine a firm’s absorptive capacity, which in turn can impact its performance. Therefore, absorptive capacity can be expected to enable the mediation of the relationships of innovative sources with the performance of firms. By means of theoretical analysis and practical investigation, this paper provides an assessment of the use of innovation sources and finds critical factors that may foster competitive and sustainable advantages.