This study presents the moderating effect of innovative culture on the relationship between knowledge management and firm innovativeness. The consequences of organisations that do not practice innovative culture would result in their inability to respond and react effectively to changes in the dynamic nature of the business environment and henceforth unable to achieve superior performance. In attempting to answer the research questions, a total of 202 MSC Malaysia organisations took part in the survey. To assess the developed model, WarpPLS (version 7.0) was applied based on path modelling and then bootstrapping. The results highlighted that three of the four dimensions of knowledge management, namely knowledge acquisition, knowledge application and knowledge protection were positively and significantly related to firm innovativeness. On the other hand, innovative culture was found to moderate the relationships between knowledge acquisition and firm innovativeness; and knowledge application and firm innovativeness.

Abstract-Malaysian rural tourism is composed of a large number of rural communities, each with distinct and varied assets. Within Malaysia, it is noticeably that tourism demand drivers play an important part in generating trips to rural tourism areas. Rural tourism enables tourists to reunite with nature and the culture of the destinations, and that it contributes to the economic and social recovery of the rural areas, as well as to the conservation of the environment and the spreading of local cultures. There are significant strengths and potential opportunities available to rural tourism marketing efforts. Ecotourism has been actively promoted by governments as well as the industry, without an overall effective strategy, successfully protected area management plans and without consultation or inclusion of local communities. Hence, the purpose of this research is to conduct an analysis based on the existing tourism industry in Bario by examining the impact of economics, environmental, social and cultural factors of the tourism industry on the local communities in Bario. The findings suggested that the tourism industry has created a significant impact on the cultural aspect of local communities. Implications of these findings are discussed further.

Knowledge management (KM), a process of acquiring, converting, applying, and protecting knowledge assets, is crucial for value creation. The purpose of this research is to empirically test the relationship between KM processes (knowledge acquisition, knowledge conversion, knowledge application, and knowledge protection), entrepreneurial orientation (EO), and firm performance. Data were collected from 159 small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia using a cross-sectional survey. This research uses partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and WarpPLS version 7.0 to test the model. The results show that three of four KM dimensions: knowledge acquisition, knowledge conversion, and knowledge protection are positively related to performance. Moreover, EO has been found to moderate the relationship between knowledge application and performance positively.

This study presents a framework to empirically validate the relationship between the tangible and intangible measures on tourism destination marketing efforts. Uniquely, a case study was developed involving two different nature of tourism destinations (semirural and rural) and is incorporated into the framework to assess its moderating effect on the relationships among the predictors and destination marketing efforts. Two hundred and ninety-three usable responses were collected using a questionnaire survey. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was utilized to perform latent variable and multi-group analyses (MGA). The findings revealed that destination appeal was found to be the biggest concern among tourists visiting semirural and rural tourism destinations in Sarawak. For intangible components, both service quality and destination image were found to be significantly related to destination marketing efforts at a semirural tourism destination. Interestingly, for MGA results, it was worthwhile to learn that the relationship between service quality and destination marketing efforts happened to have a stronger impact on semirural than rural tourism destination. Hence, the proposed framework and research findings from this case study have provided significant insights that help various tourism stakeholders to better strategize and position semirural and rural tourism, particularly in the scenario of Sarawak, Malaysia. Future studies can examine this framework and test at other tourism destinations in Malaysia or in some other countries.

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