Entrepreneurial Orientation and Entrepreneurs' Intentions and Objectives

Entrepreneurship has become an important issue for policy. At one level, enterprise creation is recognised as important for employment growth and effecting structural change; at another, there is concern to encourage existing firms to become more entrepreneurial as a means of enhancing international competitiveness. Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) reflected in recurring organisational behaviour such as innovativeness, pro-activeness and risk-taking is important in the latter context. This paper explores the extent to which differences in motives, intentions and personal objectives held by entrepreneurs were reflected in organisational behaviour relating to the dimensions of EO suggested by Lumpkin and Dess. The paper reports on a group of 153 high-tech CEOs first surveyed in 1998 when information was sought about their family and educational background, antecedents to setting up in business, motivations for doing so and personal objectives. The same CEOs were subsequently surveyed early in 2001. This second study examined ownership structures, perception of competitive issues, market characteristics, innovative behaviour, attitudes towards HRM policies, personal objectives, approaches towards risk and recent performance.entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial orientation, high technology small firms

Non-business e-commerce in Malaysia: An investigation of key adoption

Problem statement: Non-business EC is a relatively new research niche in the general e-commerce stream. Application of e-commerce by profit oriented organization already become bread and butter but still limited applied in non-business sectors such as academic institutions (as in the present study), non-profit organizations, religious organizations and government agencies. Nowadays e-commerce becomes crucially essential in reducing their expenses and improving their operations.Therefore, application of this new innovation should enhance to no non-business sectors to be livelier.Understanding the key factors of facilitating and adopting the e-commerce in non-business are still need to enrich in particularly within Malaysian context. A field survey was conducted to determine key factors that facilitate the adoption of non-business EC in Malaysian Universities. Approach: One main focus of IT implementation research has been to determine why people accept or reject new technology. The current research will explore why Non-business institutions will accept or reject e- commerce. Since e-commerce adoption decision is a strategic one, a comprehensive list of potential facilitators and non-facilitators for the strategic use of information technology was derived from past research. Thus factors used as the basis for collecting data from 65 schools, centers and units from 5 public universities in Kota Kinabalu and Kuala Lumpur. These data were factor-analyzed to determine the key underlying dimensions of facilitators. On the basis of the resulting 5 dimensions namely, relative advantage, network orientation, information efficiency, innovativeness and competitiveness, regression analysis was done to determine the impact of the 5 dimensions on adoption. Results: They suggest that relative advantage, network orientation and information efficiency are the most important facilitators to the used of e-commerce in non-business sectors. Inhibitors were not estimated eventually, as there were no non-users among the respondents. Conclusion: The results implies the non-business sectors should look into advantages, network orientation and information efficiency as a strategic based for implementing e-commerce in more effective manner to achieve their goals

Recruiting nurses through social media : effects on employer brand and attractiveness

Aim: To investigate whether and how nurses' exposure to a hospital's profile on social media affects their perceptions of the hospital's brand and attractiveness as an employer. Background: Since in many places across the globe hospitals are struggling with nursing shortages, competition is rising to be perceived as an attractive employer by this target group. Organizations are increasingly using social media for recruitment, however, little is known about its effects on potential applicants' perceptions of the organization as an employer. We thus examine whether these effects occur and rely on the media richness theory to explain the mechanisms at play. Design: A between-subjects experimental design was applied. Three conditions were used: a control group, one condition that required visiting the Facebook page of a hospital and one condition that required visiting the LinkedIn page. Method: The focal organization was an existing Belgian hospital which had a LinkedIn and a Facebook page. An online questionnaire was sent to nursing students and employed nurses over 5 months in 2015-2016. Results: Nurses' exposure to the hospital's Facebook or LinkedIn page had a significant positive effect on a majority of the employer brand dimensions, both instrumental and symbolic. In addition, nurses who visited the Facebook page felt more attracted to working at the hospital. Most of these effects were mediated by social presence. Conclusion: Nurses' perceptions of employers can be positively influenced by seeing a hospital's social media page. Hospitals can thus employ social media to improve their employer brand image and attractiveness

Learning and sharing in a Chinese high-technology cluster: A study of inter-firm and intra-firm knowledge flows between R&D employees

learning, China, knowledge work, knowledge transfer

Global Diffusion of Interactive Networks. The Impact of Culture

The Internet and other interactive networks are diffusing across the globe at rates that vary from country to country. Typically, economic and market structure variables are used to explain these differences. The addition of culture to these variables will provide a more robust understanding of the differences in Internet and interactive network\ud diffusion. Existing analyses that identify culture as a predictor of diffusion do not adequately specificy the dimensions of culture and their impacts. This paper presents a set of propositions to be used in analyses of the impact of culture on the diffusion of interactive networks. The propositions were developed using cultural constructs presented by Hofstede, Herbig and Hall. Diffusion of innovations theory and critical mass theory provide the theoretical base. The development of the propositions resulted from a close examination of the theories for\ud relationships mediated by culture. The resulting propositions use cultural variables in relationships established by the theories. It is hoped that the propositions will serve as a starting point for future research in the area of cultural influences on the diffusion of interactive networks

Determinant Factors of E-commerce Adoption by SMEs in Developing Country: Evidence from Indonesia

The aim of this study is to investigate those factors that influence SMEs in developing countries in adopting e-commerce. This study is motivated by the fact that the adoption of e-commerce by SMEs, especially in developing countries, is still very far behind the adoption by large companies. Yet to be able to survive in the new economic era, which is the information era; businesses, including SMEs, are forced to adopt e-commerce. Non-adopters will be left behind by the adopters. In addition, studies regarding e-commerce adoption by SMEs are rarely found. Therefore, the results of this study provide a timely understanding of e-commerce adoption by SMEs in developing countries. The model developed in this study is based on the TOE framework. Eleven variables are proposed as the factors that influence SMEs in adopting of e-commerce. These are organized into four groups, namely: technological factors, organizational factors, environmental factors and individual factors. Based on a survey of 292 Indonesian SMEs, it was found that perceived benefits, technology readiness, owners’ innovativeness, owners’ IT ability and owners’ IT experience are the determinant factors that influence Indonesian SMEs in their adopting e-commerce

Emerging Perspectives on Self Service Technologies in Retail Banking

This paper attempts to critically examine the available literature on the subject, discuss a model that provides a managerial framework for analyzing the variables associated with customer value, and to identify potential research areas. The discussion draws conceptual impetus from new technologies in banking services through self service technologies in banking as a tool for optimizing profit. The discussion in the paper also analyzes the main criteria for successful internet-banking strategy and brings out benefits of e-banking from the point of view of banks, their technology and customer values and tentatively concludes that there is increasing returns to scale in the bank services in relation to the banking products, new technology and customer value.Self service technology, retail banking, customer value, profit optimization