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Given the environmental impact caused by the agricultural and agri-food sectors, eco-innovation is exceptionally important in the context of food production. In this respect, this study analyses the combined effect of motivational factors, participative decision-making practices, and eco-innovation capabilities and examines the peculiarities of these effects on Tunisian agricultural and agri-food sectors. Our results reveal several findings: (1) motivational factors are positively related to participative decision-making, and eco-innovation capabilities; (2) economic and ethical motivations constitute the most critical factors for offering innovative behaviour that would enhance participative decision-making and further boost the capacity of both entrepreneurs and employees to generate eco-innovation practices; and (3) motivational factors exert a mediating role on both participative decision-making and eco-innovation capabilities. Our findings further report that enterprises could not ignore the vitality of environmental issues and motivational eco-innovation factors in order to attain sustained economic and environmental performance. Our study highlights the critical role played by participative decision-making in the process of shaping a motivational and innovative work environment, while the enterprise’s goals were not only the economic performance but also to attach great importance to achieving the environmental targets. Our study, therefore, supports that the combined impacts of these relevant constructs might overcome environmental, economic, and institutional barriers and generate further a better society that is sustainable in the long term.

School innovativeness determines the vitality of schools as learning organizations. However, schools markedly vary in innovativeness, and research is needed to account for this variability. The present study provides a theoretical account of this variability based on an uncertainty management perspective. Conceptualizing participative decision-making as an organizational routine through which uncertainty is shared and collectively managed, we hypothesize that participative decision-making is conducive to the school’s organizational capacity to foster innovation. Our hierarchical linear modeling analysis of 7507 schools in 41 countries lends support to this hypothesis. The findings demonstrate that the level of school innovativeness tends to be higher in schools that make greater use of participative decision-making. This pattern was observed in all countries examined, and the pattern was even clearer in countries with a stronger cultural orientation toward uncertainty avoidance. Although further research is needed, this study concludes that participative decision-making can promote school innovativeness by facilitating the distributed management of uncertainty.

PurposeStudies have shown that teachers' perceptions and expectations of their working environment shape their perceived stress. The present study draws upon implicit leadership theory and builds on the job demands-control (JD-C) model to investigate whether there are differences in the implications of participative decision-making and paternalistic leadership for teachers' perceived stress in the Israeli Arab education system.Design/methodology/approachData were collected through validated questionnaires returned by a two-stage cluster random sampling of 350 teachers randomly chosen from 70 Israeli Arab elementary schools. Paternalistic leadership and participative decision-making were considered as group-level variables to lower the risk of common method variance. The proposed model was tested through hierarchical regression analysis. Finally, to test the hypothesis that paternalistic leadership and participative decision-making standardized beta weights were statistically significantly different from each other, their corresponding 95% confidence intervals were estimated via bias corrected bootstrap (1000 re-samples).FindingsThe findings indicated differences in the levels of the principal's paternalistic leadership and participative decision-making as perceived by the Israeli Arab teachers. Also, the results indicated that participative decision-making was negatively correlated with teachers' perceived stress beyond the influence of paternalistic leadership.Originality/valueExamining teachers' working conditions and resources can be important since they affect teachers' perceived stress, which may in turn affects school results in the Arab education system in Israel. This study can contribute to the development of training programs for teachers to improve and adapt principals' leadership practices to the sociocultural context of the Arab education system in Israel.

Although the literature abounds with factors that contribute to organizational commitment and commitment to change, it is still unclear what factors influence teachers’ affective commitment to change. This study attempts to examine the relationships between two perceived distributive leadership functions, namely, leadership team cooperation and participative decision-making, and teachers’ affective commitment to change with the mediating effects of intentional, emotional, and cognitive readiness for change. Data consisted of 229 Malaysian teachers selected randomly from 24 secondary schools in Penang, Perak, and Johor. Data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling approach. Findings revealed either leadership team cooperation or participative decision-making has no significant direct relationship with teachers’ affective commitment to change. However, significant but weak mediating effects were found between participative decision-making and teachers’ affective commitment to change with the mediators of intentional, emotional, and cognitive readiness for change. Limitations, implications, and suggestions for future studies are presented.

PurposeDrawing on the challenge–hindrance stressor framework and the “too-much-of-a-good-thing” principle, this study examined the curvilinear effects of two emic social challenge stressors (guanxi beliefs and participative decision-making (PDM)) and the moderating effect of an etic social hindrance stressor (perceived organizational politics) on Hong Kong and United States nurses’ job satisfaction.Design/methodology/approachA quantitative survey method was implemented, with the data provided by 355 Hong Kong nurses and 116 United States nurses. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the degree of measurement equivalence across Hong Kong and US nurses. The proposed model and the research questions were tested using nonlinear structural equation modeling analyses.FindingsThe results show that while guanxi beliefs only showed an inverted U-shaped relation on Hong Kong nurses’ job satisfaction, PDM had an inverted U-shaped relation with both Hong Kong and United States nurses’ job satisfaction. The authors also found that Hong Kong nurses experienced the highest job satisfaction when their guanxi beliefs and perceived organization politics were both high.Research limitations/implicationsThe results add to the comprehension of the nuances of the often-held assumption of linearity in organizational sciences and support the speculation of social stressors-outcomes linkages.Practical implicationsManagers need to recognize that while the nurturing and development of effective relationships with employees via social interaction are important, managers also need to be aware that too much guanxi and PDM may lead employees to feel overwhelmed with expectations of reciprocity and reconciliation to such an extent that they suffer adverse outcomes and become dissatisfied with their jobs.Originality/valueFirst, the authors found that influences of guanxi beliefs and PDM are not purely linear and that previous research may have neglected the curvilinear nature of their influences on job satisfaction. Second, the authors echo researchers’ call to consider an organization’s political context to fully understand employees’ attitudes and reactions toward social interactions at work. Third, the authors examine boundary conditions of curvilinear relationships to understand the delicate dynamics.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to relate participative decision-making (PDM) to organizational learning, and examine the impact of PDM on organizational performance. Design/methodology/approach The paper integrates the resource-based theory with organizational learning theory to develop a framework, and distinguishes PDM in which decisions are jointly made by employees and managers from employee decision-making (EDM) in which decisions are completely in the hands of employees. The paper incorporates an augmented Cobb–Douglass production function into a structural equation model to estimate the performance impact of PDM and EDM. Findings The paper tests the framework against firm-level data form China, and finds that PDM provides an opportunity for collective learning, and has a positive relationship with productivity-based profit gains; the positive relationship is stronger in firms whose management has greater accumulated knowledge and experience; EDM fails to provide an opportunity for collective learning, and has a negative relationship with productivity-based profit gains. Originality/value Prior research focused on the role of PDM in enhancing the motivation and performance of individual employees, considered the degree of employee involvement as a continuum with the highest being decision-making “completely in the hands of employees,” and concluded that the more involved are employees in decision-making the better. This paper relates PDM to organizational performance, and challenges this conventional view from an organizational learning perspective.

Administrative Motivation, Participative Decision-Making and Academic Staff Management as Correlates of Productivity of Tertiary Institution's Lecturers in Delta State, used the expost-facto design, and co-relational survey method. 4,780 lecturers was the population and 2,014 the sample using the stratified random sampling technique. One research question was raised, answered and one null hypothesis formulated was tested. A self-constructed questionnaire subjected to face, and content validity by colleagues was used. Cronbach alpha correlation statistics was used to test for reliability which yielded coefficients of 0.58 and above indicating high reliability. Simple and multiple regression models of SPSS 22 were used to determine and explain the discrete variables before the main effect variables registered in the regression functions. Findings indicated a significant relationship among administrative motivation, participative decision-making, academic staff management and productivity of lecturers in tertiary institutions in Delta State. Recommendations: institutions managers and administrators should improve their administrative motivation mechanisms and programs to promote cordial relationships and yield sustainable quality productivity.

The goal of this study is to examine differences in leadership and decision-making practices in public and private universities in Pakistan, with a focus on transformational leadership (TL) and participative decision-making (PDM). We conducted semi-structured interviews with 46 deans and heads of department from two public and two private universities in Pakistan. Our findings indicate that leadership and decision-making practices are different in public and private universities. While differences were observed in all six types of TL-behaviour, the following three approaches emerged to be crucial in both public and private universities: (1) articulating a vision , (2) fostering the acceptance of group goals, and (3) high-performance expectations . In terms of PDM, deans and heads of department in public and private universities adopt a collaborative approach. However, on a practical level this approach is limited to teacher- and student-related matters. Overall, our findings suggest that the leadership and decision-making practices in Pakistani public and private universities are transformational and participative in nature.

This theoretical review examines how democratic education is conceptualized within educational scholarship. Three hundred and seventy-seven articles published in English language peer-reviewed journals between 2006 and 2017 are discursively analyzed. Democratic education functions as a privileged nodal point of different political discourses. Two discourses against (elitist and neoliberal) and six discourses pro democratic education (liberal, deliberative, multiculturalist, participatory, critical, and agonistic) construct its meaning. It is argued that the different versions of democratic education respond to various (a) ontological and epistemological assumptions, (b) normative approaches to democracy, and (c) conceptions of the relationship between education and politics. For educational policy, the review provides a critique of elitist and neoliberal policies and support for participatory decision making across discourses. Recommendations for educational practice are made by identifying pedagogies across democratic education scholarship as well as specific pedagogies for each discourse.

Over the last few decades, democratic theory has grown dramatically in its power and sophistication, fueled by debates among models of democracy. But these debates are increasingly unproductive. Model-based strategies encourage theorists to overgeneralize the place and functions of ideal typical features of democracy, such as deliberation or elections. Here I sketch an alternative strategy based on the question: What kinds of problems does a political system need to solve to count as “democratic”? I suggest three general kinds: it should empower inclusions, form collective agendas and wills, and have capacities to make collective decisions. We can view common practices such as voting and deliberating as means for addressing these problems, and theorize institutional mixes of practices that would maximize a political system's democratic problem-solving capacities. The resulting theories will be both normatively robust and sufficiently fine-grained to frame democratic problems, possibilities, and deficits in complex polities.