Human Systems Management

This Study investigates the role that agricultural cooperatives play in advancing entrepreneurship for increased food security and income, in the rural areas of developing countries. It examines cooperative member self-efficacy, entrepreneurship skills and attitudes, through self-evaluation of cooperative viability. Ergo, this article uncovers the challenges, local solutions and sources of resilience in the agricultural cooperatives of developing countries. Collected through a survey, primary and secondary data were analyzed using SPSS 23, and content analysis was performed on qualitative data. The results reveal a high self-efficacy for cooperative members and a high motivation for market development and profitability. Agricultural cooperatives lag behind in information and communication techniques (ICT), and have a limited capability to resolve challenges, yet they achieve income higher than the national average income per head per year. Despite its limitations, the study urges cooperatives to reject economic growth models that damage the environment and promote short-term economic growth against environmental susstainability. Future research directions and policymaking recommendations pertain to the need for innovation, self-coordination, and openning up and sharing to accompany economic, social, cultural and political self-development, in ways that respect, protect and adapt to nature, through resource conservation, restoration and protection.

This article explores carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and economic development in Lao PDR, in the context of the country’s urgent need and prospects for economic self-development. By employing an auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds model, the empirical results show that gross domestic product (GDP) has a statistically significant and positive effect on CO₂ emissions. The article also affirms the existence of co-integration among pertinent variables and substantiates the positive long-term shock between CO₂ and GDP. Within reality, these results confirm the presence of causality running from foreign direct investment (FDI) and GDP to CO₂. Despite its limitations, this study is a pioneering exploration of empirical evidence regarding Lao PDR’s yearning and prospects for economic self-development, toward which gravitate the article’s future research directions and policymaking recommendations.

This study assessed the effects on product design, of the so-called ‘information technology’ or IT, embodied in its societal human-system components, i.e., brainware, hardware, software, and support network or net, and the business capability of embedding knowledge management or KM in IT. By itself, IT does not provide any competitive advantage in the goods and services market, as without embedding KM in IT for capable product design, business enterprises cannot truly satisfy their customers. Ergo, the mediating effects must be examined of the KM embedded in IT. Based on 220 questionnaires distributed to industrial business enterprises in China, the proposed-model data were scrutinized through linear and multiple regression analyses. The results reinforce the need to analyze the effects of IT on new product design, while concurrently exploring the relations among IT components and IT capability, embedded KM and product design. These pioneering research results provide insights into IT components and their sensible effects on IT capability, along with the KM embedded in IT, which in turn affect the design of products that do conform to customer specifications, an issue that has received minimal attention until now. Despite the study’s limitations, the article also offers future-research directions and policymaking recommendations.

The intent of this empirical assessment was to investigate whether or not high-performance work practices (HPWPs) mitigate work-role ambiguity in business enterprises and other societal human organizations. Data were collected from 245 respondents from service sector organizations, operating in Pakistan, via a voluntary cross-sectional online survey. Pearson correlation and regression analyses test the study’s hypotheses and deduce its results. All HPWPs, i.e., i) selective staffing, ii) extensive training, iii) career development, iv) extensive compensation, v) performance appraisal and vi) employee participation, were found negatively associated with work-role ambiguity perceptions, thereby implying that high-performance work practices can reduce work-role ambiguity. Despite its qualifications, the empirical assessment offers theoretical implications and future-research directions, along with important policymaking implications for practitioners.

 By focusing on the pharmaceutical or pharma industry in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, this study empirically assesses the effects of macro-environmental risks on organizational self-development. The pharma industry in that area suffers from electricity shortages, parliamentarian transience, and terrorism and counterterrorism acts. Through a survey instrument, data were collected from pharma supervisory personnel and analysed via the PLS-SEM technique. The results confirm the adverse effects of macro-environmental risks on organizational self-development. Ergo, the article urges local parliamentarians to encourage egalitarianism, to mitigate terrorism and counterterrorism acts, and to enable the provision of electricity as well as organizational securities that can sequester the disadvantageous effects of macro-environmental risks. The study offers directions for future research and recommendations for policy-making that can help business professionals with their self-development capabilities.

 This article pinpoints the essential factors influencing hospital information system (HIS) acceptance. The principal HIS users are physicians, who play a preeminent role in healthcare services. Gleaned from hospital physicians in Pakistan, questionnaire data help evaluate HIS acceptance. The critical factors affecting it are assessed through structural equation modeling (SEM), using a partial least squares (PLS) software. The results show that human compatibility, organizational support and HIS quality positively affect both HIS perceived usefulness and HIS perceived ease of use. Subsequently, these two intermediate factors positively affect hospital information system acceptance. Despite its limitations, the study not only contributes theoretically, but also yields both future-research directions and practical policymaking guidelines, so that healthcare providers deliver what HIS users need.

 This study investigates the moderated relation between perceived fairness in organizations and employee innovativeness, in the service sector of Pakistan, a developing country in south-east Asia. Also assessing perceived organizational support, quantitative and cross-sectional survey data were collected from 548 randomly-selected service employees in Karachi, Pakistan. The study’s purpose was to examine the relation between perceived fairness and employee innovativeness, and also to evaluate whether perceived organizational support moderates this relation. Using the PROCESS macro to test for two-way interactions, the empirically assessed hypotheses show a distinct moderating role, played by perceived organizational support in the relation between fairness and innovativeness. These results are highly context specific, i.e., they pertain to south-east Asian developing countries, and also to organizations operating in the service sector only. Yet the study has significant implications for policymaking, and opens up several, potentially fruitful avenues for future research.

A vital external resource, customer-knowledge enabled innovation (CKEI) prompts business enterprises and other societal organizations worldwide to integrate many a CKEI practice or CKEIP into their business activities. This study empirically assesses the integration of such CKEIPs into firms in China. To make it so, proposed is a new multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) hybrid model, which helps assess the integration of individual CKEIP dimensions. Despite its limitations, the study offers future-research directions as well as policymaking recommendations for CKEIP integration in practice.