Narongsak (Tek) Thongpapanl

Organizational Social Capital, Formalization, and Internal Knowledge Sharing in Entrepreneurial Orientation Formation

This study considers the mediating role of internal knowledge sharing in the relationship between two critical aspects of organizational social capital (trust and goal congruence) and entrepreneurial orientation (EO), as well as how this role might be moderated by the firms level of formalization. It shows that higher levels of internal knowledge sharing relate to stronger EO, and such knowledge sharing in turn results from higher levels of trust and goal congruence. This study further provides a nuanced picture of the role of formalization in this process. The authors discuss both the studys implications and future research directions.

The Application of the Technology Acceptance Model Under Different Cultural Contexts: The Case of Online Shopping Adoption

Global usage of the Internet has increased remarkably in the past few decades, thus necessitating a better understanding of e-commerce adoption across cultures. Against this backdrop, this study contributes to the existing technology adoption and acceptance literature in the following ways. First, the authors develop an extended technology acceptance model that incorporates trust and perceived behavioral control and examine it in settings outside the United States to better understand the adoption of e-commerce across cultures. Contrary to the authors’ expectations, the predictive power of the technology acceptance model seems robust and holds true for both Pakistan and Canada, despite some noteworthy differences between the two cultures. Second, although the importance of perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness on consumers’ intentions to shop online was validated across both cultures, the results highlight the complex relationships between perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and intention to adopt in each country. The authors offer suggestions to technology managers and e-retailers regarding navigating through new technology and e-commerce adoption under various cultural contexts.

The Moderating Role of Organizational Context on the Relationship Between Innovation and Firm Performance

This study examines how two cross-functional conditions (decision autonomy and trust) and a key managerial attitude toward the organization (organizational commitment), both individually and collectively, act as catalysts of the firms ability to convert its innovation pursuits into performance outcomes. An analysis of the performance of 232 firms offers support for the hypothesized interaction effects. The positive relationship between innovation and firm performance is stronger for higher levels of decision autonomy, trust, and organizational commitment. In addition, consistent with a systems approach to organizational contingencies, the contribution of innovation to firm performance is stronger when the firms context comes closer to an “ideal” configuration of these three factors. The authors discuss the studys implications, limitations, and directions for further research.

The Role of M-Commerce Readiness in Emerging and Developed Markets

Although mobile commerce (m-commerce) growth provides ample potential for retailers around the globe, several studies have shown that it has failed to attract potential customers across different countries. This study advances the literature by comparing m-commerce customers’ behavioral intentions and actual behaviors using data from 812 m-commerce users across four countries (Australia, India, the United States, and Pakistan). This context offers a unique opportunity for understanding how m-commerce consumers’ behaviors differ across disparate national markets. The authors propose a conceptual framework linking m-commerce users’ behaviors (intentions and actual usages) to key drivers (ubiquity and habit), and they develop hypotheses about the moderating roles of m-commerce readiness and habit in these linkages. The results reveal important asymmetries between m-commerce readiness stage and between habit: users at an early m-commerce readiness stage assign more importance to ubiquity relative to habit in influencing purchase intentions, whereas the opposite is true for the users who are at an advanced stage. Habit moderates the influence of ubiquity such that its importance in determining intention decreases as the behavior in question takes a more habitual nature. The authors outline how m-retailers operating across developed and developing countries should adapt their marketing strategies to customers at different m-commerce readiness stages.

Structural and relational interdependence and entrepreneurial orientation in small and medium-sized enterprises: The mediating role of internal knowledge-sharing

This article examines the intermediary role of internal knowledge-sharing in the relationship between two aspects of small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) internal organisational context: structural and relational interdependence and their entrepreneurial orientation (EO). With a sample of 146 SMEs, the structural equation modelling results show that higher levels of internal knowledge-sharing associate with stronger EO, and that such knowledge-sharing derives from higher levels of task and reward interdependence, as well as from higher levels of social interaction and trust. The findings also reveal that internal knowledge-sharing fully mediates the relationships between SMEs’ task interdependence and trust with EO. The article contributes to research by highlighting several features of SMEs’ internal environment that can be used to enhance their entrepreneurial postures.

Explaining SME engagement in local sourcing: the roles of location-specific resources and patriotism

This article draws upon the attention-based view when investigating how local sourcing is influenced by the personal resources and values of key decision makers within small firms. We argue that such firms are more likely to engage in local sourcing when key decision makers have access to location-specific human and social capital and strongly identify with their country. Using data from 204 Ontario-based restaurants regarding their decision to source local wines, we find evidence for the enabling role of location-specific resources and patriotism. In addition, we find that patriotism invigorates the effect of location-specific social capital such that local sourcing is stronger when key decision makers exhibit higher levels of patriotism.

Identifying Structural Heterogeneities between Online Social Networks for Effective Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Social networks are extremely important for word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing. However, marketers often ignore network structures when developing WOM marketing strategies. Specifically, there is clearly a lack of research on looking into overall structures and structural heterogeneities of social networks. This research investigates structural heterogeneities between online social networks in different product categories. We collected data from four online networks in different product categories from the most popular social networking site in Taiwan. Social network analysis was performed to understand the network structures. The findings demonstrate the structural heterogeneities between these networks and we also provide managerial implications for practitioners.

Adoption of Online Shopping: A Technology Acceptance Perspective

Use of the Internet has increased remarkably in the past few decades and, therefore, has created a need to better understand the adoption of e-commerce across different cultures. Our study makes a significant contribution in different ways. First, an extended technology acceptance model (TAM) was developed and validated in an international setting, other than the U.S., in order to better understand the adoption of e-commerce across different cultures. This study extends McCoy et al. (2007) and Straub et al. (1997) work by validating TAM in the Pakistani culture. Contrary to our expectation, the predictive power of TAM seems robust and holds for both Pakistan and Canada. Second, the importance of perceived ease of use (PEOU) to intention to shop online was validated across the two cultures. The results of this study clarify an important issue in TAM studies, namely, when and why PEOU is important and influences intention to use a system (Gefen and Straub 2000; Keil et al. 1995). PEOU is more important than perceived usefulness (PU) in motivating users to accept a technology at the early adoption stage and its importance diminishes as users become familiar with the system. Practitioners, who might have confusions regarding the importance of PEOU due to previous TAM studies, should reconsider the extent to which PEOU affects online shopping at the early adoption stage. Similarly, in the case of Canadian customers, PU is the main factor that directly and indirectly affects intention to shop online. Furthermore, in developing programs to motivate customers to shop online, e-retailers must recognize the importance of trust on PEOU, PU, attitude and intention to shop as trust had the strongest effect on PEOU for the Pakistani sample and on PU for the Canadian sample.

Is More Information Content Always Good? Investigating the Impact of Website Interface Features on E-Retailer’s Sales Performance

The emergence of the World Wide Web initiated a new era of online consumerism. Though the Internet allows customers to order products conveniently and immediately, and to access information to make informed purchase decisions, it can also be an unknown realm for many. As the Internet Retailer (2009) reports in the United States, the 2007 total online retail sales and the total number of transactions for the top 500 websites rose by 21.8% and 8.8% respectively. Therefore, customers have readily adopted the Internet for various purposes, and properly used, it is a powerful tool for selling products and services. The most commonly used methods for conducting commerce on the Internet involves selling goods and services through a company’s website. However, developing a website is not without risk and businesses today face numerous challenges in their efforts to develop a website that is both functional and productive for both consumer and firm. Since customers often view this form of shopping as risky, they often rely on the information available from a firm’s website to determine the quality and performance of the product and thus if they are interested in purchasing from that website. Through such information gathering, firms are able to lower their customer’s perceived risk and simultaneously encourage them to make the purchase.

Differential Effects of Customers’ Regulatory Fit on Trust, Perceived Value, and M-Commerce Use among Developing and Developed Countries

Despite promising growth, mobile commerce (m-commerce) still represents only a small proportion of the worlds total e-commerce market. The research behind this article moves away from the predominantly single-country (typically developed) and utilitarian-focused market scope of past research to examine and provide a more nuanced understanding of customers’ motivations, whether utilitarian or hedonic, for using m-commerce across six countries. The six-country context, with data collected from 1,183 m-commerce users, offers a unique opportunity to advance mobile-retailing literature by comparing customers’ value perceptions, trust, and m-commerce use across disparate national markets. By treating motivations as conditions activated by individuals’ chronic regulatory orientations, our results show that hedonic motivation plays a more significant role in influencing customers’ value perceptions and trust for those who are promotion oriented (Australia and the United States), whereas utilitarian motivation plays a more important role for those who are prevention oriented (Bangladesh and Vietnam). Finally, both hedonic and utilitarian motivations play an important role in influencing customers’ value perceptions and trust for those who are moderately promotion and prevention oriented (India and Pakistan). These results offer insights to mobile retailers operating internationally in their decisions to standardize or adapt the mobile-shopping environment to deliver the most valuable, trustworthy, and engaging solutions to customers.