The effects of opportunity motivation and environmental contingencies on market growth strategies of African early-stage entrepreneurs

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine how early-stage entrepreneurs' opportunity motivation impacts their choice of market growth strategies as well as the contingent roles of institutional environments and product market conditions in Africa.Design/methodology/approachThe study employs hierarchical linear modeling to test multilevel models with nested data empirically.FindingsThe findings show that African early-stage entrepreneurs who are opportunity-driven and from countries with strong institutional environments have a higher tendency to adopt market exploration strategies. African early-stage entrepreneurs from countries with strong product market conditions have a higher tendency to adopt market penetration strategies. Further interaction tests show that both contingency conditions, namely institutional environments and product market conditions, moderate the effects of opportunity motivation on market growth strategies of African early-stage entrepreneurs.Practical implicationsThe study shows that policymakers in Africa need to develop flexible, supportive market-related policies based on entrepreneurs' growth paths, institutional environments and product market conditions.Originality/valueThe study is the first to explore multilevel influences on early-stage entrepreneurs' market growth strategies in Africa. It sheds new insights on the entrepreneurial marketing process of early-stage entrepreneurs in Africa.

The Association between Social Participation and Loneliness of the Chinese Older Adults over Time—The Mediating Effect of Social Support

Based on activity theory, this paper employed data from the 2013, 2015, and 2018 waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey, and adopted Hierarchical Linear Modeling and longitudinal mediation analysis to explore the temporal variation characteristics of loneliness and the influence of social participation on loneliness in Chinese Older Adults, as well as the mechanism of them. The study found that loneliness among older adults overall was at a moderate level from 2013 to 2018 and increased over time, which may be related to decreasing social participation from year to year. Decreased social participation was associated with increased loneliness over time (β = −0.060, p < 0.001) and lower social support (β = 0.109, p < 0.001), which was associated with more loneliness (β = −0.098, p < 0.001). In addition, social support played a significant mediating role in the realization of social participation in alleviating loneliness. Social participation can not only directly reduce loneliness, but also reduce loneliness by increasing social support.

Ethical leadership, perceived leader–member ethical communication and organizational citizenship behavior: development and validation of a multilevel model

PurposeThis study provides a systematic testing of ethical leadership and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) by examining the underlying mechanisms of leader motivation language on ethics through which ethical leadership influences followers’ OCB at the team level.Design/methodology/approachA multilevel model was validated via with structural equation modeling (SEM) from hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) based on data collected in a Malaysian organization.FindingsThe perceived leader–member ethical communication at the team-level makes a unique contribution beyond the ethical leadership in explaining OCBs.Originality/valuePerceived leader–member ethical communication mediates the relationship between ethical leadership and OCB.

Improving well-being with mobile AI-powered Acceptance Commitment Therapy tool: Pragmatic Retrospective Study (Preprint)

BACKGROUND The research and dissemination of smartphones-based apps to deliver coaching and psychological driven intervention had seen a great surge in recent years. Notably, Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) protocols were shown to be uniquely effective in treating symptoms for both depression and anxiety when delivered through smartphone apps. The aim if this study to expand on that work and test the suitability of AI driven intervention delivered directly through popular texting apps. OBJECTIVE This study evaluated our hypothesis that using Kai.ai will result in improved well-being. METHODS A pragmatic retrospective analysis of 2909 users who used Kai.ai on one of the top messaging apps (iMessage, WhatsApp, Discord, Telegram, etc.) Users’ well-being levels were tracked using the WHO-5 well-being questionnaire throughout the engagement with service. Paired sample t-test was used to assess well-being levels pre and post usage, and Hierarchical Linear Modeling was used to examine the change in symptoms over time. RESULTS The median well-being score at the last measurement was better (Mdn = 52) then at the start of the intervention (Mdn = 40), indicating a significant improvement (W=2682927, p<.001, one tailed test). Furthermore, HLM results showed that the improvement in well-being was linearly related to the number of daily messages a user sent (beta =.029, t(81.36)=4, p<.001), as well as the interaction between the number of messages and unique number of days (beta = -.0003, t(81.36)=-2.2, p<.028). CONCLUSIONS mobile based Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) interventions are effective means to improve individuals’ well-being. findings reported in this paper further demonstrate Kai.ai’s great promise in helping individuals improve and maintain high levels of well-being, and thus improve their daily life.

How Job Creativity Requirements Affects Employee Creativity: Evidence From a Across-Level Analysis

The present study adopted the Pygmalion perspective and a multilevel theoretical framework to investigate whether creative process engagement mediates the linkage of job creativity requirement with employee creativity. We examined whether team knowledge sharing moderates the aforementioned relationship. We obtained data from 71 supervisors and their 453 employees from three companies in China and applied Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) version 6.08 to test the cross-level hypotheses. The results revealed that creative process engagement mediates the positive linkage of job creativity requirement with employee creativity. In addition, we observed that team knowledge sharing moderates the relationship among job creativity requirement, employee creativity, and creative process engagement. The practical and theoretical implications of the findings are discussed.

Improving well-being with mobile AI-powered Acceptance Commitment Therapy tool: Pragmatic Retrospective Study

Background The research and dissemination of smartphones-based apps to deliver coaching and psychological driven intervention had seen a great surge in recent years. Notably, Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) protocols were shown to be uniquely effective in treating symptoms for both depression and anxiety when delivered through smartphone apps. The aim if this study to expand on that work and test the suitability of AI driven intervention delivered directly through popular texting apps.Objective This study evaluated our hypothesis that using Kai.ai will result in improved well-being.Methods A pragmatic retrospective analysis of 2909 users who used Kai.ai on one of the top messaging apps (iMessage, WhatsApp, Discord, Telegram, etc.) Users’ well-being levels were tracked using the WHO-5 well-being questionnaire throughout the engagement with service. Paired sample t-test was used to assess well-being levels pre and post usage, and Hierarchical Linear Modeling was used to examine the change in symptoms over time.Results The median well-being score at the last measurement was better (Mdn = 52) then at the start of the intervention (Mdn = 40), indicating a significant improvement (W=2682927, p&lt;0.001, one tailed test). Furthermore, HLM results showed that the improvement in well-being was linearly related to the number of daily messages a user sent (beta = 0.029, t(81.36)=4, p&lt;0.001), as well as the interaction between the number of messages and unique number of days (beta = -0.0003, t(81.36)=-2.2, p&lt;0.05).Conclusions mobile based Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) interventions are effective means to improve individuals’ well-being. findings reported in this paper further demonstrate Kai.ai’s great promise in helping individuals improve and maintain high levels of well-being, and thus improve their daily life.

The Effect of the OCB Gap on Task Performance with the Moderating Role of Task Interdependence

Using the social exchange theory and the social cognitive perspective in group dynamics, this study seeks to examine how different individuals in the degree of engagement in organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) among members of a team (i.e., the OCB gap) can affect their work performance across varying levels of task interdependence. The research hypotheses were tested empirically using field data regarding 146 employee-supervisor dyads collected from 41 teams in South Korea. The results of the hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analysis indicate that having a lover level of OCB engagement than the group average induces feelings of indebtedness in employees, and this sense of obligation is stronger in a high level of task dependence context. We further discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this research and suggest areas for future research.

People Financing Entrepreneurs within and outside the Family: Pandemic Decline and Resilience in Cultures around the World

People may finance entrepreneurs, often family members. Here, the question is: how has the COVID-19 pandemic affected people’s funding of family-related entrepreneurs and non-family-related entrepreneurs? The pandemic predictably reduced the funding of family-related entrepreneurs and especially the financing of non-family-related entrepreneurs. However, a culture supportive of family businesses may alleviate the declining funding of family-related entrepreneurs, predictably, while a secular–rational culture supportive of non-family businesses may alleviate the declining financing of non-family-related entrepreneurs. Similar to a field experiment, a globally representative survey was conducted before and after the disruption in 42 countries, interviewing 266,983 adults either before or after the disruption. The individual-level data are combined with national-level data on culture, amenable to hierarchical linear modeling. People’s financing of family-related entrepreneurs and especially of non-family-related entrepreneurs are found to have declined with the COVID-19 pandemic. However, culture provides resilience, in that the declining funding of family-related entrepreneurs was alleviated where the culture supports family businesses, and the declining funding of non-family-related entrepreneurs was alleviated in societies with a secular–rational culture. The findings contribute to contextualizing business angel financing temporally, as embedded in time before and after the COVID-19 pandemic disruption, and societally, as embedded in culture providing resilience.

The Relationship Between Reciprocal School-to-School Collaboration and Student Academic Achievement

Despite the appeal of promoting and forming collaborative relationships between schools, empirical evidence for an association between school-to-school collaboration and school outcomes is still somewhat lacking. This study utilized data from 76 schools nested within 56 districts in the United States to examine the association between a school's reciprocal relationships and school outcomes by employing social network analysis and hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). After controlling for school and district demographic characteristics, we found the indices of reciprocal collaboration are associated with the school's 2018 student proficiency level in both math and reading and the growth in proficiency level between 2017 and 2018. The implications and limitations were discussed.

Inter- and Intra-Regional Disparities in Russia: Factors of Uneven Economic Growth

Despite the growing body of literature on the dependence of economic growth from different factors, the reasons for uneven growth remain unclear. Within the country, regions have different growth rates in their diverse parts. It is unclear why the same factor could influence municipalities differently. To reveal this reason, we used hierarchical linear modeling with spatial dependence, which allows us to decompose variation into regional and municipal scales and take into account spatial autocorrelation. We conducted our research on data for 2239 municipalities within 85 Russian regions in 2019. Our model incorporates 20 factors of economic growth, with 7 at the municipal scale. Cross-interaction estimates established that factors attributed to the regional level determined the relationship between dependent variables (growth rate of production, growth rate of social benefits, and taxable income) at the municipal level and predictors. The influence of initial level, investments in fixed assets, employment on municipal growth varies greatly depending on such regional determinants as economic structure, innovation, human capital, and inequality. This paper adds to the existing literature on uneven economic growth at a smaller scale (municipality) and at the same time helps to rethink inter- and intra-regional disparities.