Structural holes and managerial performance: Identifying the underlying mechanisms

Structural holes theory suggests a variety of possible explanations for the empirically observed relationship between structural holes and individual managerial performance. However, little has been done to disentangle one mechanism from another. This paper empirically tests a mediated moderation model that distinguishes between the five different theoretical mechanisms: autonomy, competition, information brokering, opportunity recognition and innovativeness. The findings suggest that of these five theoretical causal motors, innovativeness plays a key role in linking network structure and network content to performance.     

‘Wallbanking’, innovativeness and computer attitudes: 25–40-year-old ATM-users on the spot

Attitudes towards ‘wallbanking’ (making use of banking services through an Automated Teller Machine (ATM)) and self-reported frequency of wallbanking have been related to attitudes towards innovations and towards computers. The investigation also included the perception of advantages as well as disadvantages of wallbanking, factors that determine one's choice of a bank, man-machine problems related to the use of an ATM, and demographic factors. Using a sample of 201 respondents in the age range of 25 to 40 years, structural equation modeling revealed that wallbanking attitudes have a major influence on the frequency of using ATMs. The innovativeness attitude ‘New is wasteful’ also showed a clear negative link with the frequency of wallbanking. On the other hand, the relationship between computer attitudes and the frequency of using ATMs had to be rejected. Income and education proved to have an indirect link with the frequency of wallbanking, which refines other research findings. These results may reflect specific financial management characteristics of the age group under investigation.     

合作性师资培育方案中mentor表现之分析研究

台湾自1997年实施“新制教育实习”措施,采行师资培育机构与中、小学校的合作精神,规定大学毕业的师资生须至学校现场实习一年,成绩合格后才能取得正式教师资格,却因现实因素而不断调整其作法;最近则企图取消这项措施,欲将教育实习融入师资养成教育的学习活动中。未来的“新制教育实习”措施无论如何实施,中小学在师资培育工作的重要性,及其与师资培育机构合作的必要性,势必有增无减,尤其为合作关系中第一线担任师资生或实习老师（后皆以师资生称之）mentor的班级教师,他们的表现不仅直接影响机构间的合作关系与师资生的实习品质,也间接影响个人的教学表现、赋权（empowerment)、专业自主的信念及专业成长。本将具体列出mentor应协助师资生“培养教学能力及发展能力”的要项,以量化研究方式分别探究mentor个人及其与师资生对协助“培养教学能力及发展能力”的认识及实际表现,并考虑mentor的性别、教学年资、接受创新程度（innovativeness)、焦虑及忧虑特质等因素的影响。     

Antecedents of Innovativeness in Technology‐Based Services (TBS): Peering into the Black Box of Entrepreneurial Orientation

Innovativeness is the organization's capability for developing and introducing innovations. We argue that new combinations and recombinations of prior and new knowledge (by way of creating, assembling, and transforming knowledge) result in innovativeness in an organization. We further assert that a knowledge‐based focus on innovativeness is particularly important for firms that are technology‐based. The majority of studies focusing on innovativeness are in the entrepreneurship arena, and a large number of studies consider innovativeness as one of three dimensions of the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) construct, the other two dimensions being proactiveness and risk‐taking. However, recent research has suggested peering into the black box of EO by disaggregating the EO construct and examining the interrelationships among its three components. Hence, using the knowledge‐based view and drawing from multiple disciplines, our study conceptualizes innovativeness as a criterion variable and investigates the antecedent role of proactiveness and risk‐taking propensity on innovativeness in the context of technology‐based services (TBS). We hypothesize that both proactiveness and risk‐taking propensity exhibit a curvilinear relationship with innovativeness and introduce organizational structure formality as a moderator to further explicate these relationships. Our results show that proactiveness has a curvilinear (inverted U relationship) with innovativeness, and that this relationship is attenuated by organizational structure formality. Additional analysis indicates that in TBS firms, risk‐taking propensity has a positive linear relationship with innovativeness, and this relationship is accentuated by organizational structure formality. Finally, we discuss important conceptual and practical implications of our study and provide suggestions for future research.     

Organizational context, climate and innovativeness: adoption of imaging technology

Managers make decisions to adopt technological innovations within an organizational context. This research explores the role of organizational climate as it affects the impacts of organizational context on innovativeness. Context refers here to organizational size, slack resources, and organizational age. We analyze three known climate dimensions as moderator variables: risk orientation, external orientation, and achievement orientation. Data describe the adoption of medical imaging technologies by 70 hospitals. Climate measures come from several technology decision-makers within each organization. Technology measures of radicalness and relative advantage are ratings by five outside experts in the use of these 68 technologies. The study also includes the traditional measure that counts the overall number of innovations adopted. Innovativeness is a multi-dimensional composite variable composed of radicalness, relative advantage, and number of innovations adopted. As expected, results show that organizational size and slack are positively related with innovativeness. Hierarchical regression analyses indicate that the climate measures of risk orientation and external orientation interact significantly with the context dimensions of organizational size and organizational age. The model developed and tested in this project explains over 50% of the total variance in innovativeness.     

Security Assurance: How Online Service Providers Can Influence Security Control Perceptions and Gain Trust

Security researchers agree that security control is a difficult to observe credence quality of online services that Internet users cannot easily assess through research or experience. Yet there is evidence that users form perceptions of security control that strongly determine how much trust they put in online services. This study investigates whether users’ security control perceptions arise solely from their predispositions or whether online service providers can influence them. The study also examines whether these seemingly undependable perceptions of security control lead to trust or whether more traditional factors might offer a better explanation of trust under security risks. To address these issues, this study proposes a new theory of security assurance that integrates the frameworks of trust and quality signals. The results show that rather than being guided by predispositions, users appear to mainly assess security control based on indirect cues controlled by service providers. Importantly, Internet users do not treat the credence quality of security the same way they treat qualities that can be understood through search and experience. Although returning users develop security control perceptions and trust from the usual heuristics of ongoing relationships, they also continue to evaluate market information about service providers like they do in new relationships. The proposed model offers a new perspective of how users respond to the uncertain and technically challenging qualities prevalent in online services.     

The Effect of Perceived Novelty on the Adoption of Information Technology Innovations: A Risk/Reward Perspective

A fundamental characteristic of any innovation is its novelty, the newness or freshness of the innovation in the eyes of the adopter. Past research has often considered novelty to be inherent to an information technology (IT) innovation, yet it is also likely that perceptions of novelty differ widely across individuals. Nevertheless, the role that the novelty of an IT innovation plays in adoption is not well understood. The primary goal of this research effort is to frame the perceived novelty of an IT innovation as a salient affective belief in the nomological network related to adoption. Further, we examine how perceived novelty influences the way individuals reconcile their perceptions of risk versus reward when considering the adoption of an IT innovation. Two empirical studies with 424 and 138 participants, respectively, examine the effect of perceived novelty on IT innovations from a risk/reward perspective. Results indicate that perceived novelty is a salient affective belief that plays a significant role in the adoption of IT innovations. Implications for both theory and organizational decision making are examined.     

Innovativeness: Redefining the concept

The main objective of this research is to highlight the need to reconceptualize the theoretical construct of innovativeness. There is a large body of research on the adoption of innovations. Although research studies in this area are motivated by fundamentally different objectives, there is a common thread that runs through all of them—the identification of innovative firms.In order to identify innovative firms, a variety of unidimensional measures of innovativeness have been employed in past research. Thus, innovation diffusion research studies have used the time of innovation adoption as a measure of a firm's innovativeness. Other studies have assessed innovativeness on the basis of the number of innovation adoptions. This research contends that the conceptualization of innovativeness as a unidimensional construct is incomplete. Innovativeness, we believe, is an enduring trait that is consistently exhibited by innovative firms over a period of time. In other words, a valid measure of innovativeness must represent this temporal dimension. This study proposes and tests the validity of a multidimensional measure of innovativeness.     

Understanding the Role of Individual Innovativeness in the Acceptance of IT‐Based Innovations: Comparative Analyses of Models and Measures*

As new technological innovations are rapidly introduced and changed, identifying an individual characteristic that has a persistent effect on the acceptance decisions across multiple technologies is of substantial value for the successful implementation of information systems. Augmenting prior work on individual innovativeness within the context of information technology, we developed a new measure of adopter category innovativeness (ACI) and compared its effectiveness with the existing measure of personal innovativeness in IT (PIIT). Further, we examined two alternative models in which the role of individual innovativeness was theorized differently—either as a moderator of the effects the perceived innovation characteristics of usefulness, ease of use, and compatibility have on future use intention (moderator model) or as a direct determinant of the innovation characteristics (direct determinant model). To ensure the generalizability of the study findings, two field studies (N= 634) were conducted, each of which examined the two models (moderator and direct determinant) and measured individual innovativeness using the two measures (ACI and PIIT). Study 1 surveyed the online buying practices of 412 individuals, and Study 2 surveyed personal digital assistant adoption of 222 healthcare professionals. Across the markedly different adoption contexts, the study results consistently show that individual innovativeness is a direct determinant of the innovation characteristics, and the two measures share many commonalities. The new measure offers some additional utilities not found in the PIIT measure by allowing individuals to be directly classified and mapped into adopter categories. Implications are drawn for future research and practice.     

Maneuvering through Hostile Environments: How Firms Leverage Product and Process Innovativeness

Is focusing on innovativeness the appropriate organizational response in hostile environments? This study addresses four distinct forms of hostile environments: market decline, restrictiveness, competition, and resource scarcity. The research draws on contingency theory to explain how these forms of hostility affect product innovativeness, process innovativeness, and firm performance. While the extant literature has investigated the effects of hostile environments on performance, little has been done to distinguish between different forms of hostility and, in turn, their potential effect on product and process innovativeness. We argue that investments in product and process innovativeness are either fostered or hindered, contingent on the form of hostile pressures from the external operating environment. These firm responses should in turn suppress the negative effects of hostility on performance. A survey using newly developed measurement scales for hostile environments was used to collect data from 148 small and medium‐sized manufacturing plants. The results provide evidence that generally supports our hypotheses. More specifically, the direct effects of the four forms of hostile environments impact product and process innovativeness differently. Likewise, the suppression and consistent mediation effects of product and process innovativeness differ depending upon the type of hostile environment, suggesting that manufacturers consider applying these capabilities contingent upon the type of hostile climate they face. Therefore, to understand how firms leverage product and process innovativeness, hostile environments are best differentiated into categories rather than being aggregated.