Customary land is commonly perceived as a barrier to economic development and indigenous entrepreneurship in Pacific Island countries. We turn this proposition on its head, arguing that customary land provides a solid foundation for indigenous entrepreneurs who wish to achieve social, cultural and environmental, as well as economic, goals for their businesses. Furthermore, we assert that appropriate tools are needed to measure the success of indigenous businesses on customary land, as conventional tools have a narrow focus on economics that fails to capture the more holistic, sustainable development goals that indigenous people hope to achieve through their businesses. The indicators we utilise relate to socio-cultural, economic and environmental sustainability. The tool’s usefulness was scrutinized through pre-testing on two indigenous businesses in Fiji; this revealed that culturally oriented tools are essential if the sustainability of indigenous business is to be measured in terms that are meaningful to Pacific communities.

In a time-lagged study with independent measures (N=115, paired responses), we examined the interactive effects of perceived organizational politics and overall satisfaction on job stress, interpersonal conflict, job performance, and creativity. The data were collected from a diverse sample of employees from various workplaces in Pakistan. The findings showed that perceived politics had a positive effect on job stress, while overall satisfaction had a negative effect on interpersonal conflict and a positive effect on creative performance. The results also revealed that in the face of high politics, highly satisfied individuals demonstrated higher levels of creativity and job performance. However, in this context of high politics negative effects were also observed, namely that highly satisfied individuals participated in interpersonal conflict and experienced high stress.

As a concept stemming from practice, business development has received scarce academic attention. In this paper, we explore core business development activities of micro-firms and the challenges they perceive in conducting them. Based on interviews with 30 micro-firms, we identify three core business development activities that leverage the firm’s resource base, complemented by three support activities that secure and organize the firm’s resources. We find the business development activities to be tightly related to the three practices of leveraging, securing and organizing resources. We also identify three important contextual influences on business development in micro-firms: industry, age and if the firm is in an incubator. Our findings contribute to developing a conceptualization and theorization of business development for micro-firms, which is relevant as the vast majority of companies worldwide are micro-firms, but many never embark on a growth path. Based on our results, we outline practical implications, for example, how companies could overcome their perceived lack of time and an agenda for future research encouraging further studies comprising micro-firms with different qualities.

We argue that there is scholarly potential in linking theory on industry clusters with theory on value networks. To date, these two theoretical streams have developed largely in parallel, limiting understanding of how the two are integrated in practice. By considering these theories in combination and the unique context of creative industries, we generate insight on the management of clusters as value networks. Our ongoing longitudinal empirical case is a new media cluster called ‘Mediapolis’ in the city of Tampere, Finland. The case study commenced at the time the cluster was in the planning and early operational stage. Results demonstrate the usefulness of linking the two theories, and support a future research agenda examining the types of cluster configurations meeting the criteria of value networks, and the conditions under which value network cluster configurations are more sustainable than simply a spatial agglomeration of clusters.

Researchers have advocated various perspectives on the relationship between strategic consistency and organizational performance. This inconclusive debate has created an inadequate theoretical foundation in strategic consistency literature. Therefore, the present study uses strategic planning, strategic change, upper echelons theory, and other literature as the theoretical foundation to empirically examine the moderating roles of organizational slack, environmental dynamism, and top management team attributes in the relationship between strategic consistency and organizational performance. Using 439 electronics companies in the Taiwanese stock market as sample data, the empirical results show that organizational slack, environmental dynamism, top management team tenure, and top management team tenure heterogeneity moderate the relationship between strategic consistency and organizational performance.

In a context of institutionalized regulation and academic framing determined by agency theory, we note paradoxes in board governance literature and practice. These paradoxes concern boards’ conflicting roles of monitoring/control, and innovation/strategy-making. We explore directors’ mind-sets about governance on which their resolution of paradoxes and their decisions and actions will be based. We do this by applying discourse analysis to the transcripts of 60 semistructured interviews conducted with New Zealand directors who described and evaluated their experience of board governance. We identify and discuss their various discourses, which we label discourses of conformance, of deliberation, of enterprise and of bounded innovation. We note the homogeneity of discourses across different organization types, the dominance of conformance, the nonresolution of paradoxes, and the likely effects in inhibiting board strategy-making and contribution to innovation. We recommend attention by boards to their mind-sets and processes, and the development of generativity.

This paper explores the emancipatory impulse of Indigenous social innovation and social enterprise. Indigenous approaches to solving social disparities reflect a perpetual search for innovative ways to change the circumstances of Māori. Power is an understudied dimension of social innovation and social enterprise. This paper explores the power dynamics that structure the disadvantage and marginalisation that cause populations to be underserved by markets and that limit their access to resources. We highlight that it is not power per se that enables social change: rather, it is power shifts. Through a single, richly contextualised case study of a well-known Māori social innovator, Dr Lance O’Sullivan, we reveal and illustrate the nuances of Indigenous entrepreneurship in the Far North of Aotearoa New Zealand. The case epitomises the transformative impact a social entrepreneur can have on the provision of healthcare amid market and policy failures.

Applying career construction theory, this study develops and tests a research model that investigates whether career adaptability mediates the effect of work social support on career satisfaction and turnover intentions. Data obtained from frontline hotel employees with a 2-week time lag in three waves in Nigeria were used to assess the previously mentioned relationships. The results from structural equation modeling suggest that work social support boosts career adaptability and career satisfaction, while it mitigates turnover intentions. Surprisingly, the results suggest that career adaptability triggers turnover intentions, while it has no bearing on career satisfaction. The results further suggest that career adaptability partially mediates the relationship between work social support and turnover intentions.

The motivation of employees is one of the main reasons why companies define mission statements and other declarations of commitment to the company’s stakeholders. Research on organizational behavior has identified three main types of motivation: extrinsic, intrinsic and prosocial motivation. However, the three forms of motivation have hardly ever been considered together, nor has it been studied which motivation is linked to the stakeholders of business companies. The main contribution of this paper is to present an agent-stakeholders model of interaction which includes and integrates extrinsic, intrinsic and pro-stakeholders motivation, as a type of prosocial motivation related to the sense of contribution to benefitting the company’s stakeholders. By basing the research on 119 Spanish companies it is verified that the three types of motivation are present in employee motivation. This finding has implications for management, as it presents the dimensions of the motivational task to be performed by managers.

This paper explores whether top management teams’ (TMTs) knowledge and experience are significant predictors of a firm’s strategic decisions and organization outcomes. The existing research throws little light on how firms with limited resources embedded in TMTs, particularly in emerging markets, innovate and achieve success in foreign countries. We focus on the impact of TMTs’ functional background heterogeneity and international experience on innovation and internationalization, as well as examine the relationship between innovation, internationalization and performance. The proposed relationships are empirically investigated in a sample of Taiwanese-listed companies operating in the electronics industry. The results demonstrate a positive association between a TMT’s functional background heterogeneity and a firm’s innovation. Moreover, a TMT’s international experience relates positively to a firm’s innovation and internationalization, therefore firms with a higher level of innovation achieve a higher level of internationalization.

This paper identifies the resource needs of international entrepreneurs and examines the role of government and industry networks as providers of resource opportunities deemed essential by international entrepreneurs for international growth. Unique resource challenges confront international entrepreneurs in their pursuit of international markets. Our qualitative study of Australian entrepreneurs in the health industry reveals that international entrepreneurs emphasise information, knowledge and relational resources as crucial for international market entry. Although government networks provide essential resources at the planning and pre-entry stage of internationalisation, at the postentry stage industry networks offer more relevant resource opportunities. Both networks, however, fall short of expectations in affording knowledge and relational resources that are instrumental in entering international markets.

This paper explores the concept of knowledge networks in order to disclose how firms are able to increase innovative performance as a result of network structure and network content, which concern how firms connect with network partners (network structure), what the essence of exchange is for firms to acquire knowledge in the network (knowledge heterogeneity), and why firms need to cooperate with others (knowledge cognition). By using a sample of 144 high-technology firms in Taiwan’s science parks to test the hypotheses, the results of this study show that, while network structures do impact on a firm’s innovative performance, access to heterogeneous knowledge and increasing a firm’s knowledge in terms of defining and recognizing novel knowledge should be considered, since both play critical roles in facilitating innovative performance. These findings suggest that knowledge flow through a firm’s relationships must be understood in terms of network structure and content.

The purpose of this study is examine how agency theory and stewardship theory lead to different firm-level outcomes on an array of different outcomes. Based on these differences, we argue for the development of an agent–steward measurement scale, which will help researchers classify chief executive officers (CEOs) along an agent–steward continuum. This, in turn, will spur research to predict and test CEO behaviors and firm-level outcomes. Agency theory suggests CEOs take advantage of their powerful positions to maximize their personal economic utility, whereas stewardship theory suggests CEOs are motivated through intrinsic awards and will balance their interests with those of other stakeholders. We use these theories to examine possible differences in CEO behaviors. This is important because different CEO behaviors might lead to differing impacts on important firm-level outcomes. This paper reviews the relevant agency and stewardship literatures, then offers propositions regarding CEO behaviors from agent and steward perspectives.

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.