Retha Wiesner

• PhD
• Professor at University of Southern Queensland

The purpose of this study is to understand employees’ attributions of human resource management (HRM) practices and how these attributions confluence with employees’ creativity. We propose the concept of human resource attribution (HR attribution) as a construct that can aid in understanding employees' creativity. This research studies how human re...

Cultivating business growth intentions in rural, regional, and remote women entrepreneurs is crucial, considering the unique challenges they face in rural areas. The growth intentions of rural, regional, and remote women entrepreneurs remain understudied. This study pioneers research on the interplay between entrepreneurial leadership competency, i...

Insight into the challenges for women entrepreneurship engagement is significantly lacking in the context of Rural, Regional and Remote (RRR) communities. Evidence suggests that a deeper understanding of the role of capital in entrepreneurship engagement for RRR women may shed light on some of the complex issues in this sphere. This paper investiga...

Within the emerging domain of entrepreneurial leadership research, gender issues have been largely ignored. This study aims to examine the nexus between entrepreneurial leader identity, entrepreneurial passion, and growth intention. This is done within the stacked context of being a woman entrepreneur, and in rural, regional and remote (RRR) Austra...

Managers need to better understand how information and communication technologies (ICTs) lead to informed decisions about the investment and advantages of such technologies. However, at best, the empirical evidence on the business value of technology is mixed in relation to small firms. A total of 43 firms satisfied the study’s definition of start-...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand whether or not factors that impact the performance–innovation nexus differ from one percentage level of performance to another among small- and medium-sized enterprises in regional Australia, with a specific focus on e-innovation by strategic and non-strategic firms in the agricultural sector and...

This article aims to develop a model for managing change toward environmental sustainability (ES) within small and medium enterprises (SMEs) by investigating the main ES change management actions evident from the ES journeys of SME ES champions. Using in-depth face-to-face interviews, the article draws from the ES change management experiences of a...

Prior research on high performance management practices (HPMP) has primarily examined the relationship between HPMP and firm performance in the context of large organisations. However, this study examines the relationship between HPMP and Sustainability outcomes (firm performance) in small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) and also within a specif...

Human resource management (HRM) clusters have been studied in large organisations, however it is a relatively new direction of research in SMEs. Through the large-scale tracking of 110 HRM practices within five HRM domains across 1230 SMEs, the objective of this paper is to firstly undertake a quantitative exploratory analysis into the clustering o...

This quantitative study explores the perceptions of379 nurses using a survey to assess awareness of, participation in, and effectiveness of 28 workforce retention strategies offered by Queensland Health. Perceptions of workforce retention strategies were also examined to determine if any aspects of the strategy (retention factors) had an influence...

This quantitative study explores the perceptions of 379 nurses using a survey to assess awareness of, participation in, and effectiveness of 28 workforce retention strategies offered by Queensland Health. Perceptions of workforce retention strategies were also examined to determine if any aspects of the strategy (retention factors) had an influence...

This quantitative study explores the perceptions of 379 nurses using a survey to assess awareness of, participation in, and effectiveness of 28 workforce retention strategies offered by Queensland Health. Perceptions of workforce retention strategies were also examined to determine if any aspects of the strategy (retention factors) had an influence...

The aim of this paper is to determine whether Australian SMEs could be characterised as ‘deliberate’ or ‘emergent’ in their strategic approaches. More specifically, surveying 1230 Australian SMEs, this paper focuses on answers to the following questions: What is the nature and prevalence of strategic practices in Australian SMEs? and to what extent...

The aim of this paper is to determine whether Australian SMEs could be characterised as ‘deliberate’ or ‘emergent’ in their strategic approaches. More specifically, surveying 1230 Australian SMEs, this paper focuses on answers to the following questions: What is the nature and prevalence of strategic practices in Australian SMEs? and to what extent...

Currently numerous businesses are implementing a formal environmental management system to achieve environmental sustainability outcomes as well as economic and social outcomes. However, the establishment, implementation and maintenance of a formal system is costly and most often beyond the reach of many SMEs. Furthermore, most SMEs do not have the...

This study identifies the change management processes involved in undertaking environmental sustainability (ES) initiatives within Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs) and relate these to the main attributes of learning organisations. Using case study techniques, the study draws from the change management experiences of a sample of 12 ES champi...

The aim of this paper is to determine whether Australian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) could be described as ‘bleak houses’ or whether they have developed over the last decade into ‘bright prospects’ typified by human resource innovations. This study builds on empirical work (n = 1425) from ten years ago (1998), and re-examines the prospects...

While there is extensive management and academic literature on the topic area of high performance management internationally, research on high performance management practices in the Australian context is limited. Furthermore, research on high performance management practices has focused predominantly on large organisations and is largely a new dir...

While there is extensive management and academic literature on the topic area of high performance management internationally, research on high performance management practices in the Australian context is limited. Furthermore, research on high performance management practices has focused predominantly on large organisations and is largely a new dir...

There are high expectations for growth and performance of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the current economic environment. SMEs are expected to play a significant role in the development plans for Asia Pacific, Canada, British Columbia and the Okanagan region (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation 2002, Canadian Federation of Independent Busine...

Great expectations are being placed on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as drivers of growth in the national and regional economies of the present day. SMEs need to successfully deal with the environmental forces for change if they are to survive and grow. Yet Organizational Change models have been developed mostly in the large business environm...

Abstract This study fills some ,of the gaps in existing studies on ,organisational change in SMEs by reporting ,the introduction of a wide range of organisational change,practices and strategic changes in Australian SMEs (N=1435). It further examines,the triggers for organisational change in Australian SMEs and the impact of certain demographic ,fa...

The 1990s witnessed significant changes in organizational design philosophy. Unique to the 1990s were prescriptions for restructuring involving delayering (the planned vertical compression of managerial levels of hierarchy) (Keuning and Opheij, 1994; Peters, 1992). What did this mean in practice? The current understanding of delayering can be encap...

The limited research conducted on Human Resource Management (HRM) in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) suggests that acquiring, developing, compensating and retaining employees is a major problem. A Queensland-wide study of Human Resource Management Practices in SMEs (with a sample of 431) found a surprisingly high take-up of human resource manag...

This study fills the gaps in existing research on HRM in Australian SMEs by considering a wide range of standard human resource (HR) practices and some industrial relations practices. The small business sector has been regarded as the natural home for 'bleak house' human resource management practices typified by low uptake of human resource practic...

The limited research conducted on Human Resource Management (HRM) in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) suggests that acquiring, developing, compensating and retaining employees is a major problem. A Queensland-wide study of Human Resource Management Practices in SMEs (with a sample of 431) found a surprisingly high take-up of human resource manag...

The purpose of this study was to obtain empirical data about the effect of workforce reduction on "survivors" in the public (n=158) and private (n=7l) sectors in South Africa. Analysis of the effects of workforce reduction indicated that down sizing affected the survivors negatively. Employee morale, staff commitment and motivation plummeted, while...

The impact of organisational downsizing on employees who remain has been the subject of intense research, particularly in the USA. The issue of so-called survivor syndrome is critically important in relation to productivity growth and the success of restructuring. However, current conceptualisation has been based largely on American research. There...

This study fills some of the gaps in existing studies on organisational change in SMEs by considering the management of change in SMEs in Queensland, Australia, built around the concept of employee participation. First, the paper examines what mental models SME managers espouse in relation to the management of organisational change; and whether sma...

While there is extensive management and academic literature on the topic area of high performance management practices (HPPs) internationally, research on HPPs in the Australian context is limited. Furthermore, research on HPPs has focused predominantly on large organisations and is largely a new direction for research in SMEs. This study attempts...