Purpose: Drawing from attachment theory and categorization theory, the present study aims to investigate the effects of brand attachment and brand passion on consumer purchase intention, and to explore the moderation effect of product involvement (i.e.a low-involvement convenience product vs. a high-involvement shopping product) in these relationships.

Design/methodology/approach: To bridge this gap, we recruited n = 205 young consumers to test the hypotheses using AMOS 24.0 and SPSS 24.0. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and moderation analysis techniques were used as data analysis methods.

Findings: Results show that when brand attachment and brand passion were assessed, the brand passion has the highest effect on purchase intention. Moreover, our data reveal that brand attachment is more likely to lead to consumer purchase intention for convenience products, while brand passion is more promising for increasing consumer purchase intention for high-involvement shopping products. Finally, we provide a detailed discussion of how these results can be applied to both research and practice.

Implications: This study offers recommendations for how practitioners can strengthen purchase intentions of convenience and shopping brands in emerging markets.

Originality/value: This study is the first to prove that brand attachment is a driver of purchase intention of low-involvement convenience brands, whereas brand passion is a more prominent predictor of the purchase intention of high-involvement shopping brands.

Purpose: Although social capital and positive reputation in organizations are essential for career success, there is a limited perspective in the literature on the political characteristics (motivation and ability) that enable one to acquire and develop the two elements. This study seeks to investigate the sequential role of political skill and network resources as serial mediators of the political will–personal reputation relationship.

Methodology: In total, what provided data for the study were 457 sales executives from 13 different sectors in the cities of İstanbul, Kocaeli, and Bursa, which is an economically leading region of western Turkey. Executives rated their political will, political skill network resources, and personal reputation. Based on the complementary theories of political influence, social network, and signaling, we analyzed the relationships between constructs with structural equation modeling.

Findings: Political skill mediated the relationship between political will and network resources,
network resources mediated the relationship between political skill and personal reputation, while political skill and network resources sequentially mediated the relationship between political will and personal reputation.

Implications: The data were collected from a single source.

Practical Implications: Political will, political skill training, and social networks may help individuals manage their personal reputation at work, thus benefiting their careers.

Originality/Value: This is one of the first studies to sequentially investigate how individuals’ characteristics (motivation and ability) develop their social network and personal reputation at work. Moreover, theories of political influence, social capital, and signaling were jointly used for the first time ever.

Purpose: This study primarily aims to provide insight into the role of deep acting and surface
acting effects on customer satisfaction, with job satisfaction as the mediating and mentoring as the moderating variable.

Methodology: The study employs SPSS 21 for the analysis of data gathered with a survey questionnaire. The survey involved a sample of 291 employees of Jordanian service firms.
Findings: Obtained findings indicate significant direct relationships, with surface acting negatively related to both job satisfaction and customer satisfaction and deep acting positively related to both. The results support the mediating role of job satisfaction on the relationship between surface acting and customer satisfaction, along with deep acting and customer satisfaction. Moreover, the outcome substantiates the moderating role of mentoring on both acting types with job satisfaction.

Implication: This is the first study to empirically examine the mediating role of job satisfaction on the employee emotional labor relationship with customer satisfaction in service companies of a developing country.

Purpose: Drawing on self-determination theory (SDT), this article aims to examine the impact of customers’ intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity on purchase intentions for luxury brands. Moreover, this study delves into the moderating effect of customer brand loyalty in these relationships.

Methodology: To this end, we tested our hypotheses with a student sample (N = 169) from Pakistan. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), structural equation modeling (SEM), and moderation analysis techniques were used to analyze the data using SPSS 24.0 and AMOS 24.0.

Findings: The results of data analysis indicated that a customer’s purchase intention for luxury brands is significantly influenced by extrinsic religiosity, while intrinsic religiosity has trivial influence in boosting purchase intention for a luxury brand. Our results for moderation analysis further show that customer purchase intention for a luxury brand is reinforced by intrinsic religiosity when customer brand loyalty is high but not when customer brand loyalty is low, whereas purchase intention for a luxury brand is fortified more by extrinsic religiosity when customer brand loyalty is low than when customer brand loyalty is high.

Research Limitations: As with any set of cross-sectional studies, our research is not without limitations. For instance, the sample size in the current study is purposefully small. This limits the generalizability of findings across a wider population.

Implications/originality/value: This study has provided a framework to explain how customers’ intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity affected the purchase intentions of luxury brands in the emerging market.

Purpose: The paper examines auditors’ experiences with corporate governance (CG) in general and
audit committees (ACs) in particular in the setting of a Polish two-tier board system and a capital
market characterized by high ownership concentration, which therefore extends the research on
CG practices of an economy beyond the well-researched Anglo-American model.

Methodology: This study adopts a qualitative research approach by using interview data from
fifteen interviews with auditors working with large publicly-listed companies in Poland to examine
the relationships among auditors, Audit Committees, and CG.

Findings: The auditors indicate that the CG environment has changed. However, the institutionalization
of an AC in Poland generally is the subject of coercive isomorphic pressures, which lead
to its decoupling and transition toward a ritualistic role. Moreover, auditors report only some
reliance on CG information in the planning phase and none in the field-testing or review phases.

Originality: The findings differ from those of prior studies conducted predominantly in the USA
and the UK, in which auditors reported far greater reliance on CG in all phases of the audit process.
The two possible reasons for this difference in findings could be the different development stages
between capital markets and different CG systems.

Purpose: The article attempts to identify the relationship between employers’ psychological contract
perception (relational and transactional expectations) and the occurrence of counterproductive
work behavior among their employees. The study seeks to extend the understanding of the
psychological contract concept and its correlation with counterproductive work behaviors. There
are numerous studies analyzing the perceptions of obligations and promises of a psychological contract
from the employee’s viewpoint. However, the question of employer expectations and the
perception of the fulfillment of these expectations is not less important, albeit much less
elaborated.

Methodology: Participants were 101 managers and owners of small and medium companies who
represent different businesses in construction industry in the Ukrainian market. Data were collected
through a questionnaire.

Key findings: The results of the study show that employers have a high level of expectations toward
their employees, and the relational character of the expectations is dominant. However, the perceptions
of the fulfillment of these expectations were at a moderate level. The results also show
that employers reveal a moderate level of counterproductive work behavior (CWB) and a significant
relationship between psychological contract (PC), relational expectations, an

Purpose: The aim of this study is to review the effects of psychological capital on employees’ burn out in the work environment. This research is paired with Self-Efficacy Theory, which emphasizes that the results of efforts and performances are the most significant sources of self-efficacy.

Methodology: Data collected from 416 Turkish workers employed at public institutions in Turkey were included in the analyses to identify the effects of psychological capital on burnout by using two different types of scales (burnout and psychological capital scales) into a single questionnaire form with Likert-type response scale. Beside the Reliability Analysis, different statistical valuation methods –such as regression and correlation analyses– have also been used.

Findings: The results of analyses conducted on the sample of 416 Turkish workers reveal that statis tically significant relationships appear between self-efficacy and depersonalization, hope and low personal accomplishment, optimism and emotional exhaustion, optimism and depersonalization. Optimism is negatively related to emotional exhaustion and depersonalization while positively and insignificantly related to low personal accomplishment. Both self-efficacy and optimism are signifi cantly effective in explaining depersonalization. Hope positively and significantly contributes to explain the low personal accomplishment level of employees. On the other hand, optimism negatively and significantly contributes to emotional exhaustion.

Implications: As found in the results of this research, optimism will decrease emotional exhaustion. Resilient people can more easily adapt to changes in life. Organizations may focus not only on improv ing organizational structure but also foregrounding workers’ positive personality traits and healthy psychological capital systems.

Value: This research which emphasizes the effects of psychological capital on burnout levels of em- ployees is as valuable as others in relevant literature with different research results which are more valuable than the other.

Purpose: We propose and test a new leadership model. Our model is an extension of the leaderplex model which proposes that leader cognitive and social complexities are linked with leader effec tiveness indirectly, in a mediation scheme, through behavioral complexity. We enhance the leader plex model with a leader’s degree of managerial discretion as the moderator of the links in this mediation format.

Methodology: We test our model with a moderated mediation approach (Baron-Kenny four-step procedure and Preacher-Hayes bootstrapping methods).

Findings: We use results of interviews with top leaders in Poland and demonstrate that a leader’s managerial discretion is a moderator affecting the mediation scheme assumed in the leaderplex model.

Limitations: The sample size is only 29 leaders. To preserve the respondents’ anonymity, their opinions were evaluated by only one researcher who interviewed them directly. The results may be country specific (Poland).

Originality: We define new boundary conditions for the leaderplex model by showing importance of a leader’s real position (managerial discretion) in an organization. Specifically, we show that the nature of the relationships between the variables of interest will change when a leader operates in one physical environment (e.g., high managerial discretion) rather than another (e.g., low managerial discretion).

Purpose: The willingness of consumers to engage in co-creation activities is affected by multiple factors, including intrinsic motivation, firm-level factors, and expected outcomes of the participation in co-creation process. However, the final decision of customer engagement in co-creation is determined by the level of brand attachment and love experienced by customers, product category, and the type of needs satisfied with the object of co-creation. The current research proposes a holistic view of the abovementioned factors and variables by exploring their relationships and mutual influence.

Methodology: This study analyzes the results of qualitative research on the dynamics between positive client attitude toward a brand and the willingness to engage in co-creation activities.

Results/Findings: The study reveals that the willingness to engage in co-creation activities is strongly related to the level of brand attachment except for when people conduct such activities to experience the process itself. The level of customer satisfaction from participation in co-creation processes influences their future sense of brand love and attachment. Moreover, the way and strength of customer engagement in co-creative projects are affected by the product category. The authors especially stress the importance of a strategic approach toward designing and implementing co-creation projects and the key role of appropriate communication with participants.

Purpose: To systematize the existing approaches and tools used for measuring competitive intensity.

Methodology: Systematic literature review along with critical literature review.

Findings: Identifcation of two main approaches to measuring competition intensity: the frst pertains to research based on experts’ opinions and involves the use of questionnaires (primary sources), while the second is based on structural variables used with a variety of indexes (secondary sources). In addition, variables applied for the purpose of measuring the intensity of competition are divided into structural and behavioural.

Practical implications: The issue of measuring competition intensity occupies a prominent place in the discussion on the effectiveness of inter-organizational relationships. The fndings outlined in this paper may help managers to develop/adopt the right approach supporting their strategic decisions.

Originality: The paper provides a complex review of the existing methods and measures of competitive intensity. It systematizes recent knowledge about competitive intensity measurements.

Purpose: Despite the importance of innovation, the full innovation potential of companies operating in the industrial sector of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) seems not to have been unlocked yet. Thus, the primary purpose of the study was to explore the key elements of company innovation policies applied on the way to successful innovation.

Methodology: The article presents results of an empirical quantitative analysis. The data has been collected through an anonymous online and postal survey. The analysis focuses on 345 companies active on foreign markets and involves a Mann-Whitney U test and a regression analysis.

Findings: The conducted analysis points to the importance of the degree of interorganizational network embeddedness for the performance of companies active on foreign markets. It shows that the higher the degree of the overall network embeddedness (measured with adaptations, trust and mutuality), the higher the company’s perceived performance relative to its competitors.

Research limitations: The research was burdened with such limitations as respondents experiencing time pressure and the use of only one source of information (the interviewees).

Originality: Despite much general evidence, the study attempts to complement the rare qualitative studies on innovation in CEE. It was carried out as a response to the lack of an in-depth study covering such recurrent challenges in the feld of company innovation policies as disruption, portfolio balancing, integration, intangibilities’ management, and play.

Purpose: The article addressed the problem of relationships between university funding and efficiency on the one hand and the quality of teaching and research on the other.

Methodology: The measurement of teaching and research quality in Polish universities was derived from two sources: 1) evaluation scores of teaching quality given to universities by the Polish Accreditation Committee, and 2) the research category grades given to university departments or units by the Polish Committee for Evaluation of Scientific Units. Subsequently, the quality measurements were correlated with financial indicators and efficiency scores obtained from data envelopment analysis.

Findings: The correlation and regression results indicated that public universities that have received higher scores of teaching quality simultaneously have higher average scientific categories. There was also a substantial relationship between the revenue per student and the revenue per teacher and variables describing quality but the regression analysis exhibited opposite directions regarding the type of quality indicator.

Research limitations/implications: The quality of teaching and research at universities was assessed despite the limited availability of internal information gathered from higher education institutions (HEIs).

Practical implications: The authorities of a university can simultaneously track the improvement of quality or financial efficiency without losing their interdependence when reforms of HEI operations are conducted.

Originality: The study proposed new measurements of quality derived from external evaluation bodies and investigated the relations of these measures with selected financial and efficiency indicators.

Purpose: There have been numerous studies analyzing the role of psychic (and cultural) distance in the internationalization process focused on relationships between distance and market selection, entry mode, or subsidiary performance. Still, cumulative findings of this body of research are mixed and inconclusive. Thus, this review aims for a rigorous presentation of past research on psychic distance, with particular focus on the aspects of international business operations affected by psychic distance in the light of empirical studies.

Methodology: This review encompasses 55 papers, both empirical and conceptual, published between 1990–2015 in top IB, international marketing, and management journals. In general, the papers under review were published in 27 journals, with the vast majority of them being published in 2005 or later. The vast majority of reviewed papers are of empirical character (47 papers), while eight are conceptual.

Findings: Since 2005, the number of articles published in top academic journals that featured the term “psychic distance” in the title has quadrupled. Common research topics include not only the core domain of internationalization process and performance, but also focus on understanding the concept of psychic distance, analyzing its antecedents and coping modes. Other studies have addressed the performance implications of psychic distance in conjunction with variables like strategy adaptation to foreign markets.
Research limitations/implications: While the present review is limited in the number of papers taken into account, it does provide an initial overview of the structure of the field. However, the comparability of findings of different studies is limited by factors such as firm samples or presence of multicultural nations. In terms of directions for further research, promising topics include the relationship between perceived and ‘real’ distances or the effectiveness of different coping modes.

Originality/value: The present paper identifies key research streams related to psychic distance and its role for international business. Based on an analysis of their content, it outlines several avenues for further investigation.

Purpose: Miles and Snow’s conception of strategic types is the most popular and extensively studied typology of strategic choices. Consequently, in recent years it has been related to organizational performance measures. Despite numerous studies conducted in different environmental and organizational settings, the research results of relationships between strategic types and organizational performance are ambiguous. In this paper, we seek to advance the knowledge regarding how a chosen strategic type affects organizational performance measures in the transition economy of Poland.

Methodology: Using quantitative research results, on the basis of data from 96 organizations we statistically test four research hypotheses.

Findings: Research results reveal the existence of “clear” strategic types in majority of companies but highlight moderately strong relationships between declared strategic type and organizational performance. In turn, they suggest that Prospector and analyzer strategic types promise slightly higher performance than Reactor and Defender types.

Originality: This research project on strategic types in SMEs in a transition economy is one of few dealing with this topic that have been conducted in Eastern European countries to date.

Purpose: The aim of the study is to analyse marketing challenges facing Polish public universities. Polish universities must urgently adjust their educational offers to deep declines in internal demand and to increased internationalisation of the educational market. The author explores the impact of management decentralisation in faculties of higher education institutions upon their market orientation, relationships with the external world and commercialisation of educational services targeting foreign students.

Methodology: The study is based mostly on direct observations and an extensive review of international literature devoted to the model of the university of the future and its relationships with the environment. The author has been lecturing on marketing for many years; he also manages educational business programmes at a large public university in Poland where he acts in the capacity of a dean.

Findings: Future universities should develop an array of services based on the relationship marketing with key strategic partners (business, local authorities, students and graduates). The idea of a modern educational service should be based on an individual approach to students expanded with complementary services. Educational services should be developed interactively in cooperation with key stakeholders.

Practical implications: Polish public universities should become more marketing oriented and develop a set of commercial educational services addressed to foreign students and to entrepreneurial and internationally-oriented Polish students.

Originality/value: Conclusions formulated by the author result from his long personal experience and knowledge of the specifi city of the educational market in Poland and across the world and his experience in managing an interdisciplinary faculty of a large public university. The interdisciplinary approach to the subject combines elements of the relationship marketing and interactive development of new educational services.

Purpose: The paper presents results of research on determinants of selection of the moment of starting running own business.

Methodology: The method of questionnaire research (partial) was used in the paper. 60 students of full-time studies in Poland, who were selected at random, took part in the research. The research constitute continuation of the researches on entrepreneurship conducted by the SES students of full time studies at the University in Szczecin since 2003.
Data obtained from presented research were compared in the paper with international material, which was collected in the previous editions (obtained from the Lithuanian, Latvian, Russian, Ukrainian and Hungarian students).

Conclusions: Results of the conducted research let positively verify the hypothesis that actual tendency of individuals to set up own business appears after few years of professional career – what explains quite substantial disproportion between percentage of people declaring willingness for setting up own business and actual percentage of self-employed in the working population. Preferences concerning this scope have infl uence on shaping the level of self-employment in a given country.

Practical implications: The material contained in the paper can be useful for appropriate public services, which deal with support of development of self-entrepreneurship of citizens, because of the fact of paying attention to analyzed relationships.

Originality: The results of presented research constitute an attempt of filling the gaps, which occur in the literature of subject concerning entrepreneurship. There are not papers concentrating on the issues of factors determining moment of choice of setting up one’s own business.

Purpose: The aim of the paper is to present a model of the network of relationships of an enterprise with entities around it in the virtual environment, with particular consideration of internet communities against the background of its earlier forms, along with a presentation of the crucial factors, which have influenced its shape. An additional aim is to identify the key factors that determine the relationships of the network.

Approach: The article is theoretical. The basis for discussion are literature studies in economics and management.

Findings: The results of the discussion indicate the manner in which new information communication technologies change the form and nature of relationships between companies and their external environment. The author puts forward a proposal concerning the development possibilities of these mutual relationships in two opposing directions, i.e. cooperation and destruction.

Originality: A model of business relationships in the virtual environment is presented. The author also suggests the key internal and external factors determining the form of the mutual relationships in the virtual environment

Purpose: The aim of the article is to present a strategic model of inter-sectoral cooperation and its conditions, such as social responsibility and trust. The development of organizations depends on them, but also on relationships with business partners. The greater the integrity and social responsibility of the organization, the greater the trust and willingness of the business partners. The importance of trust should also be observed in the Polish reality, not only in business.

Methodology: The aim was achieved by discussing literature and presenting the results of focus discussion in groups. The end result was a conceptual model of NGO (non-governmental organization) – PA (public administration) cooperation (2012).

Findings: The conceptual model of NGO (non-governmental organization) – PA (public administration) cooperation seems to be an interesting and promising solution. It seems to be a significant task of both popularizing assumptions and providing building blocks for models. It could be considered to be a very useful tool. This model should provide a helpful framework for developing local standards that will be useful in inter-sectoral cooperation.

Originality: The novelty and originality of the study is the theoretical and practical presentation of the strengths of inter-sectoral cooperation.