Purpose The mechanisms through which leaders influence innovative work behaviours (IWB) are important in innovation management. The purpose of this paper is to explain how leadership and justice relate to IWB through the successive mediating roles of affective commitment and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB). Design/methodology/approach The study is based on survey of a random sample of 300 employees selected from 652 employees from a public university, and a convenience sample of 159 employees from predominantly service-based enterprises in Lesotho (n=263). The Statistical Package for Social Sciences and the analysis of moment structures version 24 are used to analyse data. Specifically, the study uses factor analysis; correlation; structural equation modelling and bootstrapping techniques to examine the hypothesised relationships. Findings The results suggest that the model that fits data well is the one which shows that the effects of both leadership and organisational justice on IWBs are successively mediated by affective commitment and OCB. Because of its social and affiliation-oriented nature, the study submits that OCB is an effective explanatory factor between predictors and IWBs. Originality/value The study makes a novel contribution to the extant literature by evaluating the serial mediating roles of affective commitment and OCB between leadership and IWB on one hand, and justice and IWB on the other hand.

Purpose Even though the influence of transformational leadership on organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) has been extensively studied in human resource management, evidence on the mechanisms through which transformational leadership affects OCB is only beginning to emerge. In view of the ambivalence about strategies of advancing OCB, this paper aims to establish whether and the extent to which the relationship between transformational leadership and OCB was mediated by organisational justice and affective commitment. Design/methodology/approach The study was based on a random survey of 300 employees from a medium-sized public university, and 122 employees from public and private sector organisations in Lesotho. Partial least squares structural equation modelling and process macro techniques were used to analyse data. Findings The results confirmed significant paths between transformational leadership and organisational justice; organisational justice and affective commitment; and affective commitment and OCB. The results further suggested that perceived justice and affective commitment were significant serial mediators between transformational leadership and OCB. Practical implications Elucidation of the nature of mediating factors between leadership and OCB would leverage organisations’ level of understanding of why transformational leadership is critical to promoting OCB, and hence encourage them to design programmes that would equip supervisors with skills necessary to enhance it. Originality/value This is one of the few theory-driven primary studies that examine the serial mediating roles of organisational justice and affective commitment in the transformational leadership – OCB relationship.

Even though many people show high concern for the environment, the existing literature suggests a disjuncture between peoples' environmental concern and their shopping behaviours. Based on a survey of 200 shoppers around the precincts of two shopping malls in Lesotho, the objective of this paper is to examine the relationships among consumers' environmental concern, attitude towards green products, and green purchase intentions. Factor and regression analyses are mainly used to analyse data. The results show that environmental concern is strongly related to attitude towards green products and weakly related to green purchase intentions respectively. When environmental concern and attitude towards green products are entered simultaneously to predict green purchase intentions, the influence of environmental concern becomes insignificant. The mediated relationship suggests that environmental concern affects green purchase intentions indirectly through attitude towards green products, which in turn directly affects green purchase intentions. Based on the results of the study, we provide policy implications and prospects for future research.

PurposeThe pre-eminence of innovation and technological transfer in promoting agricultural productivity and competitiveness in developing countries is widely acknowledged. However, the disparate streams of literature on productivity and competitiveness have explored innovation and technology transfer as independent predictors. Consequently, the mechanisms through which innovation and technology transfers jointly affect productivity and competitiveness of small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) in emerging economies remain under-explored in literature. The present study sought to examine the relationships among innovation, technology transfer, productivity and competitiveness of small-scale agricultural businesses (SSABs) in selected regions in South Africa and Zimbabwe, neighbouring countries which have been plagued by food insecurity in recent years.Design/methodology/approachA total of 400 questionnaires were distributed to SSABs owners based in Free State and Mashonaland provinces of South Africa and Zimbabwe, respectively. In total, 268 usable questionnaires (67%) were returned for analysis. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) and Process macro (based on SPSS) techniques were used to analyse data.FindingsThe results supported direct significant paths between innovation and technology transfer; technology transfer and productivity; and productivity and competitiveness. Furthermore, the results suggested that technology transfer and productivity consecutively fully mediate the relationship between innovation and competitiveness.Research limitations/implicationsThe use of a survey could not provide sufficient explanations as to why the variable examined related the way they did.Practical implicationsThe study provides useful insights into the significance of considering the dimensions and methods of innovation and technology transfer in agricultural business activities and processes to improve productivity and competitiveness of SSABs.Social implicationsThe study provides some insights into how innovation and technology transfer could be employed by small scale agricultural businesses as critical mechanisms for heightening productivity and competitiveness of these firms to guarantee food security and employment creation for emerging economies.Originality/valueTo the researchers' knowledge, this is one of the pioneer studies to examine the impact of both innovation and technology transfer on productivity and competitiveness of SSABs in two countries in Southern Africa. The study also constitutes a significant contribution to examining serial mediation of technology transfer and productivity of innovation and competitiveness.

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