Journal of Business and Retail Management Research

        The research had, as general objective, to evaluate the presence of server behaviour in sales professionals of Brazilian real estate market. It was an exploratory and descriptive work and its universe was composed by real estate agents of the city of Natal, in Rio Grande do Norte - Brazil, being selected a sample of 70 realtors and 135 customers, through the criterion of accessibility. As data collection instruments, two questionnaires were used, both with closed questions, structured and elaborated based on 24 attributes related to the dimensions of server behaviour, considering their importance and their performance in the perception of realtors and customers. With regard to perceptions, divergent results were pointed out, be it with regard to the dimensions of the proposition, or with respect to the attributes. However, the survey found that there are elements of server behaviour in the researched realtors. Also, it was possible to identify the variables and diagnose gaps to be improved to mobilize more competitiveness to these businesses. Finally, limitations and opportunities of future work are presented.

        This work answers to practical questions: “does efficiency influences salespersons’ behaviour”, and “what the most affected gestures by such efficiency are?” This research is based on 1,205 gestures observed during 382 sales calls averaging 11 minutes for 382 salespersons. About the theory, we integrated gender, situation and achievement variables and applied a MANOVA analysis (number of gestures), a Newman-Keuls test (differences between averages), a Chi-squared test (statistical significance of gestures). Generally, efficiency creates real differences in gestural behaviour. Specifically, the best salespersons perform the largest number of gestures. For a good salesperson, conviction is the dominating quality. Conversely, for a weak salesperson, the quality of information is preferred. This finding shows that conviction drives the best salespersons, where desire to inform (too much, probably) drives the weakest ones. They forget to convince and to conclude because they want to explain more and more.
         A good salesperson will know when to encourage clients to touch products, evaluate client behavior, use more targeted arguments, and wear pleasant clothes. Meanwhile, a weak salesperson will use a monotone tone, move his/her legs, make too many auto contacts and change body positions too many times.

        This paper investigates the strategic decision-making process (SDMP) of Greek banks’ top management in the context of profound organisational changes introduced in 2012 as a result of the 2008 global financial crisis. It focuses on the impact of three key dimensions of the SDMP, namely, rationality, intuition and political behaviour, relating to four changes introduced, namely, acquisitions, branch network rationalisation, integration of information technology (IT) and downsizing of operations and personnel. A questionnaire-based survey was conducted, targeting Greek banks’ top management. Out of 140 questionnaires, 78 were returned, a 55.71% response rate. Data was analysed using structural equation modelling. Research findings identify rationality as a key dimension of SDMP for all organisational changes, as there was high focus on identifying and analysing all required information, use of external financial advisors, and reliance on multiple methods of information gathering. Decision-makers used their intuition in the form of past experience when making acquisition decisions, whilst their personal judgment and “inner voice” were neglected.

        In order to develop a relationship, Islam has several values that must be obeyed by its believers. Indonesia as a country with the largest Moslem population in the world must aware the relational values based on Islamic teachings. In this research, there are four variables used Islamic Relationship Value, Relationship Quality, Adaptive Selling, and Salesforce Performance. Six hypotheses are built in this research to show that the Islamic relationship value has significant impact to Adaptive Selling, Islamic Relationship Value has significant impact to Relationship Quality, the Islamic relationship value has significant impact to salesforce performance, the relationship quality has significant impact to salesforce performance, and the adaptive selling does not have significant impact to salesforce performance. The analytical tools in this research employ Stuctured Eqution Modelling by using SPSS 22 and AMOS 22 software. There are 250 salesforces who are observed by using purposive sampling. The result in this research will give an innovation to marketing studies. The novelty of this research explains the Islamic Relationship Value as a new wave in marketing studies.

        The burnout is a common occurrence in psychology and a few applied business fields. Due to continuous acknowledgement in the practice community, this topic’s academic acknowledgement has begun to surface in accounting literature. Previous studies in accounting revealed that burnout amid internal auditors are an important issue for auditors and employers. This paper examines the influence of ethical tension and time pressure on job burnout and its influence on premature sign-offs among internal auditors.  To assess this, a total of 187 internal auditors who work in Jordanian public shareholding companies answered a questionnaire. The findings were that ethical tension and time pressure are important antecedents for job burnout, which increases internal auditors’ level of premature sign-offs. Furthermore, the study found that the job burnout mediates the relationship between ethical tension, time pressure and premature sign-off.

        Global mega-trends are leading to increasing levels of complexity, dynamism andturbulence within organisations. In an uncertain economy, organisations need real strategies that will enable them to thrive. Traditional leadership approaches have been rendered insufficient by rapid changes in the knowledge economy. The leadership literature  has  typically  conceptualised  the  construct  in  terms  of leader  style  and  behaviour  and,  leader-follower  relations. But findings from  this  stream  are  far  from  convergent and cogent. The purpose of this article is to create a theory-based integrative framework that can be used to identify the components comprising management and leadership. It re-examines the link among the self, others and the organisation and, how leadership should be conceptualised in the increasingly global contemporary context. Specifically, we apply the dichotomy of management versus leadership to theorise that it is not simply a matter of individual differences in competencies, skills and attitudes that ensure the development of creative and talented leaders. Rather, it is about how praxis, practice and the practioner offer both a challenge and transformation lens to observe the ways that global leadership is bounded and constrained by organisational and managerial conventions. In essence, this work suggest that leaders and managers need to apply systemic thinking competencies to catalyse organisational performance in the current fast-changing, knowledge-driven global business landscape in order to remain competitive.

        Organisations often tend to justify their business activities by citing improved business performance neglecting conservation of environment in which these activities are carried-out. This research investigated the corporate social responsibility activities of motor vehicle retailers that aim to improve business performance and conserve the natural resources in the environment in Gauteng Province, South Africa. A qualitative research approach was used in this research to address the research objective and interviews were conducted with managers of motor vehicle retailers. A content analysis was used with the aid of Atlas.tiversion 7 to generate themes in analysing the primary data. The research uncovered that motor vehicle retailers execute social responsibility activities to promote environmental conservation, improve organisations’ business performance, and build relationships with external stakeholders. This research provides recommendations to key stakeholders in the motor vehicle industry, and future research are also provided in this research.

        The objective of this study which focused on educational industry in Indonesia is to provide empirical evidence about the negative influence of role stressors on lecturer performance. Three major components of role stressors are role conflict, role ambiguity, and role overload. This study also examines burnout as the mediation of role stressors on lecturer performance. Primary data were obtained through distribution copies of questionnaire to the respondents. Eligible respondents were full time lecturers of faculty of economics at private universities in West Jakarta, Indonesia. Hypotheses test uses path analysis. Followings are the research results. Role conflict has no influence on lecturer performance. This result means that the incompatible tasks that have been given to the lecturers do not directly influence their performance. This research proves that role ambiguity and role overload have negative influence directly on lecturer performance. Lecturers need clear frameworks of their tasks.
        This research successfully proves the mediation of burnout on the influence of three major components of role stressors on lecturer performance. The practical implication of this research is very useful for the management team in managing lecturers in private universities. Continuous new additional task as a form of role conflict will cause burnout and will ultimately has an impact on performance. Unclear role will be confusing to the lecturer and will cause burnout which at the end will create lower lecturer performance. Pressure of too many works to be done or too little time to do so many tasks will cause burnout which at the end will cause lower performance.

        This study examines the effect of new mandatory disclosure policy, Government Regulation no 47/2012, on Indonesian environmental disclosure practices. The sample consists of 249 companies listed in Indonesia Stock Exchange from all industries except trading and financial sectors. Tha data is based on annual reports and sustainability reports from2011 to 2013 which were available in the public domain. Year 2011 was the year before the policy was issued, 2012 was the issuance year, and 2013 was the year after the issuance. Comparing environmental disclosure practices at the year before and the year of the mandatory policy being issued, there were significant increases in terms of GRI index based information being reported; the number of words used to report environmental issues based on GRI; carbon emission index being reported; and the number of words used to report carbon emission aspects. In year 2011, only 13.95% companies were disclosing based on GRI, but then the amount increased to become 25.25% in 2012 and 30.90% in 2013.  Based on detail analysis, it was found that the significant increases occur not in the companies with high carbon emission, but in the companies with moderate or low carbon emission. This study supports legitimacy theory as described by Suchman (1995) where in order to gain legitimacy, the role of social audience in legitimacy dynamics should be addressed. In this case, the issuance of new mandatory regulation has increased participation of moderate and low carbon emission companies in environmental disclosure practices where previously the issues used to be of interest for companies with high carbon emission only.

        The aim of this study is to investigate the role of comprehensive performance measurement systems (CPMS) on managerial performance (MP), which is mediated by procedural fairnes. In order to generate the goal of the study, the researchers conduct a survey study at manufaturing firms. We test our 84 usable data from middle and functional managers of the firms using Sstructural Equation Modelling analysis, in particularly Warp PLS 4.0. The results indicate that CPMS has a significant effect on managerial performance (MP) both directly and indirectly through procedural fairness (PF). This study demonstrates the importance of procedural justice implementation in companies with respect to the application of CPMS.

        Employees’ turnover is a critical issue for many companies around the globe. This international phenomenon considered as one of the big obstacles for the organisations in achieving their strategic plans and gaining competitive advantages. Therefore, there is a big need to conduct more studies and investigations to provide a better understanding of the factors affecting this phenomenon in different settings and contexts of research, particularly in the non-western perspectives such as Malaysia who is facing big challenges toward the employees’ turnover in many sectors. Thus, this paper aims to study the relationship between organisational learning culture (OLC), organisational citizenship behaviour(OCB) (benefiting the individual OCB-I and benefiting the organisation OCB-O) and turnover intention (TI). Due to that, this study proposed framework to study the effect of organisational learning culture on turnover intention via the mediation role of organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB-I, OCB-O). In addition, the direct effect between the variables has been discussed. Hence this paper is expected to fill the research gap and contribute to the body of knowledge in this area of research.

        Interactions with consumers in a retail environment play a fundamental role to increase sales, improve satisfaction and promote loyalty among such consumers, at the same time of improve financial results that may sustain a company long-term. Such face-to-face or online interactions have several components that may cause an improved State of Empowerment perception resulting in a relevant satisfaction, thus, loyalty and retention. For such purpose, the actual study comes to analyze what are those behaviors or actions that bring into play such perception, and how such perception relates to an improved customers’ satisfaction. 
        This document aims to prove the importance of such behaviors when interacting with consumers in online or face-to-face retail transactions, and how such behaviors need to be reflected and exploited when connecting with customers.

        This study examines the implementation effect of accrual based accounting system to employee performance with adaptation and computer anxiety as the moderating variables. The sample in this research is the government officials in central Java, Indonesia. This research uses Moderated Regression Analysis (MRA) for data analysis. The results show that the implementation of accrual based accounting system affect the performance. Adaptation is not proven as a moderating variable however computer anxiety is proven to be a moderating variable.

        Global competitiveness and the adoption of new business strategies have placed most manufacturing industries under pressure, and this has led organisations to adopt different strategies in their supply chain (SC) processes to enhance their competitiveness. Included in these are green manufacturing, business process re-engineering, and total quality management. The implementation and adoption of green supply chain management (GSCM) remains a problem in developing countries, including Nigeria’s Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) manufacturing industry. An exploratory study was therefore conducted on green SC initiatives within the FMCG manufacturing industry in Nigeria to establish how this has affected both its performance and competitive advantage. Primary data were collected from 41 selected respondents at a FMCG manufacturing industry based in Lagos, Nigeria using quantitative methodology through the distribution of a questionnaire. A significant number of respondents (32 of 41; 77.54 percent) agreed that the implementation and adoption of green SC initiatives would enhance organisational performance, and the proper integration of all processes used for GSCM, which practice can lead to enhanced competitive advantage. The results furthermore indicate that the success of GSCM in the FMCG manufacturing industry requires a collaborative approach which differs from those traditionally used for SCs.

        Consumer Behaviour issues have become more heterogeneous because of cultural differences. This phenomenon makes it progressively important to understand factors impacting it. As such, this study examined the determinants of consumer buying Behaviour among Saudis and expatriates living in Riyadh; this study discovered the role of price, motivation, perceived culture importance and religious orientation toward consumer buying Behaviour. The study utilises survey questionnaire for data collection from car agencies in Saudi Arabia. The data is analysed using Partial Least Squares (PLS-SEM) technique to test the hypotheses of the study. The empirical findings confirmed the direct relationship between price, motivation, perceived culture importance and consumer buying Behaviour. Besides, price and perceived culture importance were found significantly related to religious orientation. However, contrary to the hypotheses, it is found that the mediating role of religious orientation in the relationship between price, motivation, perceived culture importance and consumer buying Behaviour is not supported. The result is discussed in the context of addressing consumer buying Behaviour in Saudi Arabia. 

        This paper presents an investigation into internships in South Africa’s retail sector. The research questions it seeks to answer are: (i) What are the benefits (strengths) of this sector-sponsored internship programme (ii) What are its limitations (weaknesses), and (iii) What changes, if any, can be recommended to improve the programme? The methodology used was a case study of a retail sector internship, with data gathered via a survey of 12 retail firms, two focus groups of 15 interns, and four depth interviews with retail managers who had previously been interns. The study found that the programme is very beneficial to the participants, as they get exposure to real work opportunities and the previously disadvantaged are empowered with requisite skills for the sector, assisting with career advancement and upward mobility. This was despite the weaknesses of an inadequate stipend for interns and inefficiencies in the internship administration.

        In a conventional wisdom, it was believed that in traditional consumer journey, consumer will engage in an extended consideration and evaluation before entering into the loyalty loop. But with the emergence of online and offline advocacy the modern consumers may skip various traditional phases and may directly enter into loyalty loop.  Being well informed and empowered modern-day consumer would wait hardly few seconds before he shifts loyalty to the rival brands. Hence, the retailers and marketers need to deal with well informed and empowered consumers who are disloyal to the core. Therefore, this paper proposes the adoption of Omni-channel marketing as a strategy to deal with disloyal customers. This study is both analytical and theoretical in nature and is based on the secondary data as well as extensive review of literature on the subject.

        Emotional intelligence is one of the most important personal trait linking to leadership in a way of assisting and developing the desired skills needed for those leaders applying effective leadership. There is a lack in the research literature related to leadership style in the Military Production Factories (MPFs) sector in Egypt. There is great attention and initiative to the reform in governmental sector in Egypt. This study considered as a baseline study for identifying the dominant leadership style in MPF.Military production industry sector includes 20 factories and companies lead by the Ministry of Military production (MOMP). The factories produced Military and non-military production. The sector includes 33546 employees. The selected organisation (MPF) works under the authority and supervision of the Ministry of military production (MOMP) in Egypt, however the majority of worker, including top, and middle line management are civilian. This study investigates the style of leadership mainly transformation and transactional leadership. The scale of the questionnaire was developed based on two sources and references to measure this relationship between the independent variable emotional intelligence and dependent variable leadership style. This study uses statistical tools SPSS including regression, correlation, Cronbach’s alpha.
        The result on the level of Leadership, First, -study shows that female employee of the MOMP have a tendency towards a high level of transformational leadership style behavior more than male managers in the MOMP. Confirmed by Mandell and Pherwani, 2003). Second, Males’ leadership style more oriented to the style of transactional style of leadership (confirmed by Strickland, 2008). On the level, emotional intelligence females scored higher than male in emotional intelligence. Furthermore, the dimensions of emotional intelligence (emotion attention, emotional clarity and Emotional repair (women scoring higher in emotional repair the most).

        In Malaysia, little research has been published investigating hospitality graduates’ justification for not joining the hotel industry. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to investigate the influence of physical working conditions, pay and benefits and promotion opportunities on students’ intentions. A self-administered questionnaire was used to gather data and measure respondents’ perceptions, and a total of 102 hospitality students at University Utara Malaysia completed the survey. The study employed correlation and regression analyses to test the hypotheses. It was found that physical working conditions, pay and benefits, and especially promotion opportunities positively influence students’ intention to join the hotel industry. Considering the positive impact of these factors, it is suggested that hoteliers should take initiatives to attract and motivate students to join their industry.

        Business activities that have been happening are able to help the people's economy, but also considered quite alarming, because it is considered to be responsible for environmental damage. This situation needs to be saved by implementing environmentally friendly business. Environmentally friendly should emerge from within each individual entrepreneur. The purpose of this study is to explain the effect of environmental commitment on green innovation and product success that can affect Bali's silver creative industry. The study was conducted on small industrial silver in Gianyar regency as many as 469 business units. This study uses individual samples as a unit of analysis of 120 respondents. The analysis technique is SEM base Analisis of Moment Structures (AMOS). The research findings show that the commitment to the environment has a positive and significant impact on the green innovations applied so far. This finding means that the more entrepreneurs have a high commitment to safeguard the environment, the more innovative it will be in implementing green innovations. Environmental commitment has a positive and significant impact on the success of new products. The more committed to maintaining the environment for the entrepreneur, the more able to achieve the success of new products produced. Green innovations have a positive and significant impact on the success of new products. The more innovative the more successful the new product will be. The direct effect of environmental commitment to the ongoing success of new products has a greater value than the indirect influence. Without green innovation indicates that environmental commitment is able to influence the achievement of new product success.