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Top management support is recognized as the most critical factor for the success of large information system (IS) projects. However, getting this support is often difficult, because top management has multiple priorities and one has to compete with others to obtain such support. Political maneuvering is thus an integral and necessary part of the process of obtaining top management support. In this chapter the authors review current research on this topic and organize and synthesize our findings into a framework. The authors then propose four specific strategies which can be used to obtain top management support, including the following: (1) social capital, (2) social engagement, (3) rational persuasion, and (4) exchange strategies. While the authors argue that all four strategies should be applied, the specific circumstances in which they should be applied vary. A two-stage process is proposed that identifies the appropriate criteria for determining the most appropriate strategy. The criteria are: (1) the type of top management support needed (i.e., durable vs immediate) and (2) the level of top management-project team trust (i.e., high vs low).

The present work investigated the effect of corporate social responsibility and top management support on employee ecological behaviour (EEB) with the mediating role of green culture and green commitment. Social identity theory (SIT) was used to describe the association between green culture, green commitment and EEB. Further, a conceptual model that summarises the interaction between perceived corporate social responsibility, top management support, green commitment, green culture and the adoption of ecological behaviour was developed.

The paper opted for a quantitative design using convenience sampling by collecting the data through a structured questionnaire gathered from 308 academics working in five Malaysian higher education institutions.

Corporate social responsibility and top management support positively influence green culture and commitment. Moreover, green commitment positively influenced EEB and fully mediated the relationship between corporate social responsibility and EEB and between top management support and EEB.

The academic staff of universities was the target population of this research. Nevertheless, universities have a diverse population with complex activities that can affect the implementation of a sustainable workplace within the campus. Future research should also examine non-academic staff, including administrative, technical and operational staff, due to different employees' perceptions.

As far as the authors know, this is the first study to assign the mediator role to green culture in a relationship between top management support and EEB amongst academic staff in the Malaysian context. Future research should consider other intervening variables that influence adopting ecological behaviour.

Top management support is considered to be an area that has high impact on project success. However, previous studies have also stated that effective top management support practices may vary across industries. This paper focuses on top management support for projects executed in the software sector. The objective of this study is to identify those top management support processes that have the greatest impact on software development project success and to compare these critical processes with the actual type of support provided by organisations.

About 17 top management support processes have been identified from the literature. Their effectiveness has been calculated according to their relative impact on project success. Data has been collected from 213 software development project managers and their supervisors in Japan, Israel and New Zealand. For each country, the impact of top management support processes on project success has been analysed to identify critical processes. Then, the actual level of use of both critical and non critical top management support processes by senior managers has been compared.

Different critical top management support processes have been identified in each country. However, six processes have been found to have higher contribution to project success than others. These processes are described and discussed in the paper. It has also been found that in all three countries top managers do not invest more effort in critical processes, than in non critical ones. Instead, in all countries, executives choose to perform easy‐to‐do processes. Critical top management support processes, which have higher impact on project success, often do not receive an appropriate level of attention from senior managers in the software industry.

Senior managers in the software industry may focus on critical processes, rather than paying lip service to less important ones. Specific practices designed to support these critical processes are also presented in the paper.

The paper suggests a detailed list of critical top management support processes, which significantly improve project success in different cultures. The paper also discusses this list in comparison with what is currently done by executives in the software industry and concludes with specific recommendations to managers in the software industry.

Technology has been central and has made service innovations technically feasible and economically viable. Top management support, however, plays an important role in shaping a firm’s service innovation-related strategies and decisions. This study aims to propose a theoretical framework that delineates the relationships among openness of technology adoption, top management support and service innovation within social innovation context.

This study obtained the data through a survey of 176 information technology (IT) firms in Taiwan; IT managers were selected as the data collection sources. A partial least squares analysis was used to address sophisticated data analysis issues.

The empirical evidence indicates that openness of technology adoption enhances service innovation within social innovation context. Furthermore, top management support facilitates the relationship between openness of technology adoption and service innovation.

The openness of technology adoption captures the interactions among top management support in shaping service innovation. Researchers should examine the nature of open technology infrastructure that will foster such service innovation from social innovation perspective.

The detailed findings offer practical suggestions for firms that are compelling to invest in advanced open technologies, giving opportunities for service innovation, solving social problems and meeting the new societal challenges. Additionally, firms may foster their top management’s positive intention to support service innovation by pre-planned support activities, such as allocating sufficient new service resources and qualified support technicians.

This study contributes to the evolving literature on the social innovation, service-dominant logic, and contingency theory. This analysis suggests that these perspectives offer a potentially useful view for integrating insights from different literature streams (e.g. openness, social innovation, service innovation, top management support and technology management) by examining them through a different conceptual lens, thus reinforcing existing findings.

Knowledge sharing, the most important process in knowledge management, enables knowledge-intensive organizations to foster innovations and to gain competitiveness. Universities, the best contemporary embodiments of knowledge-intensive organizations, nowadays face fiercer competition in the changing world. Knowledge sharing is the key for academic departments to gain competitive advantages through innovation. However, limited studies examined the relationships between top management support, knowledge sharing and affiliation and trust. Based on the literature review, this study developed a research model which aims to examine the relationship between top management support and knowledge sharing, and the mediating role played by affiliation and trust.

A questionnaire survey was conducted in eight universities in Hong Kong. Data gathered from 109 professoriate staff (including chairs, professors and [research] associate/assistant professors) were used to test the four hypotheses in the research model with partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The results showed that top management support has a positive impact on affiliation and trust, and that affiliation and trust also have a positive impact on knowledge sharing. However, this study showed an insignificant linkage between top management support and knowledge sharing. Therefore, this study confirmed the mediating role played by affiliation and trust.

Based on the results, this study provided recommendations on how academic management and knowledge management consultants increase the faculty members’ affiliation and trust, for instance, mentoring, performance appraisal system, social interactions and communication pathways.

The findings of this study contribute to the literature in two ways. First, affiliation and trust are two interplayed elements of team climate that should be considered together. Second, this study validates affiliation and trust as a full mediator between top management support and knowledge sharing.

This study aims to examine the effect of top management vision on top management support, practice, and the employment of managers with disabilities within the sport industry.

A questionnaire was developed to collect data on perception of top management vision, top management support, supportive practices, and representation of managers with disabilities in sport organizations and sent to 500 collegiate and professional sport organizations in the USA. In total, 196 respondents (39 percent) returned their completed survey forms, of which 190 forms were useable. Data were analyzed using path analysis.

The results indicated a significant path between supportive practices and the representation of managers with disabilities (β = 0.15, p < 0.05). Top management vision was also shown as a significant positive moderator of the relationship between top management support and supportive practices.

Results suggest that top management vision is an important addition to top management support for facilitating the implementation of supportive practices, which, in turn, increase the representation of persons with disabilities in managerial positions.

This is the first known empirical investigation examining the role of top management vision and top management support in creating managerial opportunities for persons with disabilities.

As top management support is considered one of the critical success factors in project management, effective executive involvement can significantly improve project success. However, the literature does not provide organizations with a clear list of effective top management support practices to achieve this type of support. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to highlight the top management support processes, which highly contribute to project success.

As it is expected that results vary among different project scenarios, data were collected from 700 project managers and their supervisors in seven industries and three countries – Japan, Israel, and New Zealand.

Results reassure that top management support is significantly correlated with project success. Results also show that different top management support processes should be implemented in any industry and culture.

The paper introduces and discusses a detailed list of critical top management support processes for each industry and country, and concludes with introducing best practices to support these processes.

The study challenges the assumption of independence among Technological, Organizational and Environmental (TOE) factors and investigates the influence of TOE factors on Big Data Analytics (BDA) adoption among Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Top management support was proposed as a mediator between technological and organizational factors and BDA adoption. Furthermore, the moderating effect of environmental factors on the association between relative advantage, compatibility, competitiveness, organizational readiness and BDA adoption was evaluated.

Data were collected from 171 SME manufacturing firms and analyzed using the partial least squares technique.

The findings confirmed the interrelationships among the TOE factors. The effects of compatibility, competitiveness and organizational readiness on BDA adoption were mediated by top management support. Furthermore, environmental factors moderate the influences of compatibility and organizational readiness on top management support.

The findings contribute to the TOE model by challenging the assumption of independence among TOE factors, and future studies should use this model with more caution and consider the potential relationships between TOE factors.

This study aims to investigate the factors influencing the social responsibility performance of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) megaprojects. Specifically, it examines the role of isomorphic pressures and the joint influence of perceived benefits and top management support on megaproject social responsibility performance (MSRP).

Drawing from institutional theory, social exchange theory, and top management literature, this study established a conceptual model featuring eleven hypotheses. Subsequently, a questionnaire survey was administered to collect data from 238 actively engaged participants in BRI megaprojects. Structural Equation Modelling was utilised to analyse the data.

The empirical findings indicate that mimetic and coercive pressures positively influence MSRP. Perceived benefits and top management support significantly enhance MSRP. Moreover, perceived benefits and top management support partially mediate the effects of coercive and mimetic pressures. However, when it comes to normative pressures, their impact on MSRP is solely channelled through the support of top management.

This study is one of the early endeavours to explore the factors influencing the social responsibility performance of BRI megaprojects. It sheds light on the interplay between external pressures and internal factors in shaping social responsibility efforts in these projects. These findings are of particular significance for BRI actors and stakeholders, offering guidance for enhancing social responsibility strategies within the context of BRI megaprojects.

This paper aims to devise a case-controlled method combined with Bradford Hill criteria for causal inference of contractual disputes in construction projects. It is a genuine attempt in a systematic method from research design to execution for causal issues where only observational data is available.

The authors located insufficient top management support as the putative pathogen of construction disputes based on a literature review, an interview and Delphi surveys. A questionnaire survey was then conducted to collect case-controlled data to ensure comparability, in which for each disputed project put in the experimental group, the authors sought for a dispute-free project of similar characteristics. The incidence rates of insufficient top management support in the experimental and control groups were then examined by Bradford Hill criteria as an alternative to the test of intervention effect.

The association of insufficient top management support and construction disputes was tested to conform with the Bradford Hill criteria with case-controlled data where applicable and logical deduction where statistical tests were not applicable. With a clear, positive, reasonable and statistically significant association, while excluding methodological biases, confounding and chance, the authors reached a causal verdict of insufficient top management support causing contractual disputes.

This paper supports the validity of applying a case-controlled method combined with Bradford Hill criteria in investigating causal issues in project management, especially the verdict of causal inference based on empirical data. In addition, the located root cause of contractual disputes could inform project management personnel with reasoned strategies for dispute avoidance.