Bond University’s Associate Professor Justin Craig, along with North American based co-authors Clay Dibrell (The University of Mississippi), Don Neubaum (Oregon State) and Chris Thomas (The University of Mississippi), recently received the prestigious 2011 Best Empirical Paper award from the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management.

The Entrepreneurship Division, working with its affiliates, has a number of awards aimed at motivating and rewarding excellent research in entrepreneurship. Research plays a vital role in accomplishing their mission to grow entrepreneurship scholars. The world’s leading entrepreneurship scholars are among the previous recipients of this award.

Their paper titled Stewardship climate scale: Measurement and an assessment of reliability and validity, builds on the seminal work of Davis, Schoorman, and Donaldson (1997). Using a three study approach and a combined multi-level respondent sample of 847 from 237 firms, Craig, Dibrell, Neubaum and Thomas developed a statistically valid and reliable 18-item measure to capture the degree to which executives act to engender a stewardship climate in their organisations. Nomological validity of their dual (psychological and situational) mechanism measure is established by demonstrating significant associations with multiple individual- and firm-level measures.

“Our Stewardship Climate Scale provides an important first step in linking theory building with theory testing and we are confident that, by increasing rigor and relevancy to future discussions, the scale is positioned to play an important role in helping establish alignment between stakeholder groups within the firm and the vision and values of the leadership,” observed Dr Craig.